CRITERIA FOR ELEARNING PROGRAMMES EVALUATION

Abstract

Recent concerns of educational policy level exercise a certain pressure on evaluations of educational programs to provide concrete results, comparable, usable to define the most appropriate strategies for development of education. Debates at this level, which need evidences extracted from existing evaluation research reports, are concerning important topics regarding the relationship with new technologies such as: the emergence of a increasingly pronounced digital divide, the need to promote and support the set of skills for 21st Century, as well as the "insufficient experience of radical change in education", computer-assisted instruction being regarded as "the vanguard of the knowledge society”. An important point in continuing this synthetic and general perspective refers to the fact that there are no solutions or "magic" ideas to operate independently of context. Therefore, the principles and suggestions in this article be taken as such and customized according to the level at which the program is implemented, the concrete needs of the target group, type of intervention chosen, the particular education system or targeted curriculum, the results of other complementary programs etc. Such an approach towards a methodological construction is useful as well for the design stage of eLearning programmes, in the actual context of multiplication of initiatives aiming at incorporating new technologies to increase performance and quality of education. The article highlights a number of useful aspects for a better evaluation of elearning programs, starting from the preparedness of the target groups and institutions, then focusing on the object of evaluation, the expected results, the indicators and instruments used in evaluations.