Institutions, tutors, media and evaluation in distance learning in the European Union

Las instituciones, los tutores, los estudiantes y la evaluacion en la educacion a distancia en la Comunidad Europea Abstract: Distance Learning is becoming more and more an important way of meeting society`s needs for flexible ways of educating and training people, not only for those who are geographically far from universities or training centers but also as a way of covering a wide range of people who do not have the time to participate in traditional classrooms but need to update their skills. Supporting students/trainers at a distance raises a number of issues which are of great pertinence to the programs themselves. The TEEODE Project, Technology Enhanced Evaluation in Open and Distance Learning, was a research project over two years in Europe covering all fifteen member states of the European Union whose main objective was to find out the models of assessment and evaluation used by the institutions and tutors supporting distance learning. A second objective was to develop technology tools and methods to support tutors and professors in the assessment and evaluation of students in distance courses. This research showed that there is a big variety of distance learning settings across the European Union. This variety stems not only from cultural differences between countries and different resources but also from institutional differences. This paper will address one of the areas of the research by presenting the analysis of some of the data pertaining to the institutions regarding institutional aspects, type of training of tutors, media used, and evaluation. Resumen: Los ponentes presentaran un analisis de datos recabados sobre la capacitacion de tutores, los medios usados y los metodos empleados para las evaluacione usadas por las instituciones y los tutores dedicados al apoyo de la educacion a distancia. La busqueda se llevo a cabo por mas de dos anos cubriendo a 15 estados de la UE.