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In recent years, Web technologies have helped expand distance education in higher education. Online programs have become widely and generally accepted in many countries. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the number of Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) offering distance education has increased by one-third since 1994-1995; and 44 percent of IHEs offer distance courses. The number of enrollments reached 1.3 million credit hours, and thirty percent of all distance education courses now use the Web. A recently conducted survey found that the number of online learners in fall 2002 topped 1.6 million, with public institutions leading the way (having approximately 1.3 million online learners). The main purpose of this short paper is to describe the evaluation of current online education at three levels: (a) macro-level, referring to the evaluation of entire online programs; (b) meso-level, referring to the evaluation of individual online courses; and (c) micro-level evaluation, referring to the evaluation of online students' learning. At each level, relevant literature, pertinent evaluation issues, and questions are discussed. While many issues addressed in the paper are applicable to both educational and corporate settings, the paper is focused on the higher education setting.

This study examines the literature on learner support with the aim of helping institutions of higher education plan and implement support services for distance learners. The following issues emerged as areas of particular importance to future research in distance learner support: 1) the lack of research on cost-effectiveness; 2) the lack of empirical research; and 3) the need for a learner-centered approach in designing and implementing learner support. These issues are discussed in detail to enhance our understanding the role of learner support in post-secondary level distance education programs. It is further argued that future research should focus more on developing and refining methods for cost-benefit analysis of learner support, developing a general framework of the learner support model in dual-mode institutions, and developing systematic methods to identify, analyze, synthesize, and assess the needs of distance learners.

Corporate and educational settings increasingly require decision making, problem solving and other complex cognitive skills to handle ill-structured, or heuristic, tasks, but the growing need for heuristic task expertise has outpaced the refinement of task analysis methods for heuristic expertise. The Heuristic Task Analysis (HTA) Method was applied to three settings to generate improvements and more detailed guidance, and to identify variations in the method for different situations. The three settings were group counseling, tutoring on writing skills, and selecting artwork for a product line. The formative research methodology was used to test the method and generate improvements. The three studies produced some common and some unique findings and recommendations. A tentative revision to the HTA method is proposed. Includes seven tables. Interview questions and the HTA Method interview sheet are appended. (Contains 41 references.) (Author)

The importance of learner support has been emphasized over and over in the distance education literature but there is a lack of comprehensive analysis of this issue. Besides that, most of existing studies on learner support are based on large-scale correspondence program and few of them provide guidelines for planning and implementing support services in Web-based environments for dual-mode institutions, which is the majority of distance education program providers in nowadays. In this paper, a body of literature on learner support, including various journal articles and technical reports, was examined, and three issues emerged from the review: (1) the lack of research on cost-effectiveness of learner support; (2) the lack of empirical research; and (3) the need for learner-centered approach in designing and implementing learner support. These issues are discussed in detail to enhance understanding of learner support in post-secondary level distance education program, and it is further argued that future research should focus more on developing and refining methods for cost-benefit analysis of learner support, developing a general framework of learner support model in dual-mode institutions, and developing systematic methods to identify, analyze, synthesize, and assess the needs of distance learners. (Contains 63 references.) (Author/AEF)

Corporate and educational settings increasingly require decision-making, problem-solving and other complex cognitive skills to handle ill-structured, or heuristic, tasks, but the growing need for heuristic task expertise has outpaced the refinement of task analysis methods for heuristic expertise. The Heuristic Task Analysis (HTA) Method was applied to three settings to generate improvements and more detailed guidance, and to identify variations in the method for different situations. The three settings were group counseling, tutoring on writing skills, and selecting artwork for a product line. The formative research methodology was used to test the method and generate improvements. The three studies produced some common and some unique findings and recommendations. A tentative revision to the HTA method is proposed. (Contains 10 references.) (Author/AEF)