"Evaluating e-learning" checklist

William Horton Consulting, an American consulting firm, uses this criteria catalogue to select e-learning programs and other multimedia products. It prefaces the catalogue by stating:

"This spreadsheet is only a tool to help in making your decisions. You should never use this spreadsheet alone to make the decision and never use it to replace common sense. The more you customize the spreadsheet to reflect your concerns, the better it will work."

The Excel file available for download consists of various spreadsheets: Intro, Instruction, Criteria & Weights, Summary, and five sample evaluations.

These 9 evaluation areas are at the beginning:

1. Business criteria (3 questions)
2. Technical criteria (5 questions)
3. Content criteria (3 questions)
4. Instructional design criteria (5 Questions)
5. Practice and feedback criteria (4 questions)
6. Usability criteria (5 questions)
7. Media criteria (6 questions)
8. Navigation and control criteria (5 questions)
9. Motivation criteria (4 questions)

Under the heading "Additional criteria" users have the option of adapting the checklist to meet their own needs.

In brief:

• highly economical with 40 questions ;
• only superficial orientation help (but does not claim to be more than this either);
• users can fine-tune the answer scale as much as they like;
• definition of must-have criteria possible (if they are not met, the program excludes the product from the selection);
• goal is specifically to  compare  alternative learning programs;
• instructions are comprehensible;
• checklist is user-friendly.

On the web page of Horton Consulting you can find the checklist: http://www.horton.com/html/evaluatingbook.aspx (click on "Evaluation Checklist").

Horton Consulting also offers a tool for economic comparisons (return on investment) of e-learning combined with traditional classroom teaching: http://www.horton.com/html/evaluatingbook.aspx. (click on "Evaluating E-Learning spreadsheet").