Critical Evaluation of Learning Resources

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Recommended: positive and negative benefits of e learning.

Critical Evaluation of Learning Resources

The learning resource that will be examined will be the online learning supplementary material for the "Critical Thinking in Adult Education 41909" on WebCT. WebCT is the major provider of e-learning systems for higher education institutions such as university. WebCT provides a highly flexible e-learning environment that empowers institutions the ability to achieve their unique objectives. University of Western Sydney is one of the institutions which utilize the WebCT technology to provide information as a supplement to support students with their learning.

The Content

The supplement "Critical Thinking in Adult Education 41909" on WebCT provides a very good example for critical study as to whether such resource is effective or not. It is first essential to examine the content of the resource since that the information within the supplementary material is the most important. There are several criteria that must be analyzed:

The content must provide sufficient details and also aimed correctly at the intended audience, in the case of the Critical Thinking supplement, the format of the site quite simple and the language used is easy to understand. Because the course is aimed at academics, the language used is in a more formal and general terms instead of personal.

Content must be accurate, up-to-date and properly edited, in the case of this course, the course is constantly updated with notices being placed on the front page stating the latest news and instructions on the course, such notices includes the newest brief instructions about discussion group's tasks.

Course should provide links to further information about the course. In this area, this is where ...

... middle of paper ...

...tiveness as a teaching material. WebCT can provide a huge variety of resources which could be linked to a huge database of materials on the internet. However, these resources must be utilized before this course can be considered as worth-while to operate. The maintenance involves methods such as people to run and keep the records constantly and also requires lecturers to reply to questions and e-mails. Furthermore the costs involved include the cost of registering for WebCT and also the wages for the maintenance professionals who will keep the course running.

Conclusion

The certain areas of the "Critical Thinking in Adult Education" course on WebCT has been analyzed, but whether the course should be maintained should be decided through a series of processes which determines whether maintaining such a course will be too costly or not in exchange for the benefit.

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