L3 2 2

=Early assessments of individual student capabilities guide activities and support during the remainder of the course. =

Evidence
Students’ capability for effective e-learning is related to their information, communication and technology (ICT) proficiency and skill level, thus there is a crucial need to assess, and understand the ICT proficiency and skill level, and support its development, for all students (Hillesheim, 1998).

Ho et al. (2010) found that e-learning system quality and e-learning readiness influence learning outcomes indirectly through e-learners' competency. Therefore, organizations that would like to implement e-learning with their employees should focus on improving individuals' online learning skills such as self-direction, meta-cognitive, and collaborative skills.

JISC report on e-assessment, ‘it should be noted that our definition embraces not only assessment of learning but also assessment for learning.’

Resources
Teachers need to monitor students’ early use of e-learning technologies, such as discussion forums. Vonderwell and Zacharia (2005) show how this can be done. They also note that non-posting to asynchronus discussion forums does not mean that the students are failing to engage with the technology as ‘lurkers’ or ‘read-only participants’ may still be learning vicariously.

A pre-course assessment such as an e-passport test could be used to gauge student readiness for e-learning:

http://www.e-skills.com/cgi-bin/go.pl/newsletters/passport_issue1_story.html?uid=935

Course activities can then be tailored to needs. Also, the dept. of Nursing at New Mexico State University offers a computer competency evaluation for their distance education course: http://www.nmsu.edu/~nursing/documents/compskillassess_msn.html