Technological Evaluation and Optimization of E-Learning Systems Components - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 171

3.2.3 Example of the Evaluation of
Virtual Learning Environments

suitable VLE for students with special education
needs/disabilities, higher weights for certain
criteria should be chosen: Accessibility (e.g.
a weight a 4 = 0.2 ) and Personalization (e.g. a
weight a 6 = 0.2 ). Then using the 'normalization'
Formula (2), all other criteria weights are set to
a i = 0.1. In this scenario, the experts find that,
in contrast to the simple general case (see Table
9), both ATutor and Moodle could be considered
as optimal alternatives for learners with special
needs (see Table 10).
The results in Table 10 show that the VLEs
ATutor and Moodle satisfy the quality up to 58.75%
in comparison with the ideal VLE for students
with special needs (this reflects a linguistic judge-
ment that is between 'fair' and 'good''), while
Ilias gets a rating of 50.00% (which corresponds
the linguistic variable 'fair').
If we want to select, for example, the most
suitable LOR for students with special education
needs/disabilities, we should assign higher weights
for the particular 'quality in use' criteria, such as
'Customizable metadata schema' (e.g. measuring
the weight a 14 = 0.05 ), 'Customizable and exten-
sible standard UI' ( a 24 = 0.05 ), 'Accessibility'
( a 31 = 0.06 ), and 'Ability to customize look and

In the general case, all the VLE evaluation crite-
ria are of equal importance. The values of utility
function (3) for a particular evaluation scenario,
where non-fuzzy values E for all variables in
Table 8 are calculated according to Equation (1)
and all the VLE evaluation criteria are of equal
importance, are presented in Table 9. According to
the normalization requirement (2), all a i = 0.125.
The results of this evaluation scenario dem-
onstrate that the VLE Moodle match the quality
up to 60.93% in comparison with the ideal VLE
(which is lower than expert's linguistic judgement
'good' in Table 8), ATutor gets a rating of 54.37%
(it is higher than 'fair'), and Ilias 50.00% (i.e.
'fair'). Thus for the requirements of this scenario,
the VLE Moodle is the best alternative (among
the three evaluated VLEs) from technological
point of view in the general case. This alternative
has shown the highest ratings in terms of both
'internal quality' (see General criteria ratings) and
'quality in use' (see Adaptation criteria ratings).
In a more specific case, e.g. when experts
(decision makers) would like to select the most

Table 10. Summary of VLEs technological evaluation for the learners with special needs

Technological evaluation criteria ATutor Ilias Moodle

General criteria ratings
Architecture and implementation a 1 = 0.1 0.0500 0.0325 0.0850

0.0675 0.0675 0.0500

Interoperability a 2 = 0.1

Internationalization and localization a 3 = 0.1 0.0325 0.0500 0.0675

Accessibility a 4 = 0.2 0.1700 0.0650 0.1000

Interim rating 0.3200 0.2150 0.3025

Adaptation criteria ratings
Adaptability a 5 = 0.1 0.0325 0.0500 0.0675

Personalization a 6 = 0.2 0.1350 0.1350 0.1000

Extensibility a 7 = 0.1 0.0675 0.0850 0.0850

Adaptivity a 8 = 0.1 0.0325 0.0150 0.0325

Interim rating 0.2675 0.2850 0.2850

Total evaluation rating f(X) (different weights) 0.5875 0.5000 0.5875