Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 431.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Willard McCarty <w.mccarty@btinternet.com> (25)
Subject: evaluating Web sites
[2] From: lachance@CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Francois Lachance) (29)
Subject: measuring learning
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2002 10:47:08 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <w.mccarty@btinternet.com>
Subject: evaluating Web sites
In response to Humanist 15.427, allow me to point interested persons to the
summary I put together last Autumn on evaluating Web-sites, at
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/year1/comms/evaluate.html>. As many
will know there are now many pages devoted to the topic, some with useful
exercises. I would be most grateful for pointers to additional exercises
and indeed for comments on my own summary.
It does seem to me that in the context of *humanities* computing, critical
thought about online resources is of the greatest importance. Of course
much of this applies to resources in earlier media. Thus we can draw on
prior work and be immediately helpful to colleagues whose focus is on these
earlier media. (In fact, as a number of people have pointed out, our
raising of the question for electronic resources illuminates its relevance
elsewhere.) What preoccupies me particularly, however, are the differences
that the electronic medium makes. To take just one example, the ease with
which lists are made in HTML suggests that they have a new prominence
online, and the degree to which highly divergent, de-contextualised
resources can be recontextualised hypertextually in such lists gives them
the potential for rhetorically very interesting work.
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty, Senior Lecturer,
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London,
Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.,
+44 (0)20 7848-2784, ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/,
willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk, w.mccarty@btinternet.com
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2002 10:47:21 +0000
From: lachance@CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Francois Lachance)
Subject: measuring learning
Willard,
I think this little bit from a vendor might be of interest to subsribers
concerned about the rhetoric surrounding the question of the links between
training and education:
<cite>
An organization will license Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
for their employees. The average employee will utilize approximately 20%
of the capabilities of the software program (open a document, save, print,
etc). Yet, an organization wanting to provide training, will most likely
license training courseware to cover 100% of the software programs
capabilities.
</cite>
http://www.bitlearning.com/corporate/profile.asp
Accessed November 5, 2001
This is not necessarily a horrible scenario of wasted resources. We can
distinguish between training and education. The learning opportunity of
being exposed to more than the 20% of software features commonly utilized
may be more valuable than acquiring the knowledge of which button to push.
It seems that a scenario of habit formation subtends the granularity
argument (waste to know what you don't use). And that the argument fails
in a scenario of discovery where it becomes an asset to learn what can be
used and where it is a waste not to play.
Of course, BitLearning sells courses in three highly quantifiable subject
areas: computer hardware, software and business management. One wonders
what presures market forces will have on huminities disciplines and how
these pressures will shape moves to quantify learning outcomes.
--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/ivt.htm
per Interactivity ad Virtuality via Textuality
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