E-Learning v. Traditional Learning the

e-Learning v. traditional learning The role of scales when it comes to evaluating e-learning vs. traditional learning is very important. Without scales, there is no way to measure the efficacy of each one -- as well as their measurement in relation to one another. There must be a way to confront the research objective. Measurement, of course, is a basic activity of research. We retrieve information about processes by observing them. In making sense of these observations, there is the requirement that we calculate them.

The process of measuring and the bigger scientific question it serves interacts with one another (CSSE 2010). The type of scale to use in evaluating e-learning vs. traditional learning can cause some confusion when it comes to measuring behavior and efficacy of the learning systems. In measuring behavior and efficacy, there is the chance that the researcher selects the wrong scale. To measure behavior and efficacy, first we have to know how each scale works so that we can choose correctly (CSSE 2010).

The lowest type of measurement scale that one can use (from a statistical perspective) is the nominal scale. This type of scale just means that one is placing data into certain categories without any kind of specific structure. (For example, the terms that we use for colors; the underlying spectrum is ordered but the names are nominal). So, in the case of research, a Yes/No scale is nominal because it has no order and there is no distance between Yes and No (CSSE 2010).

An ordinal scale is another type of measurement. Ordinal scales are all about ranking things. When you are asked to rate what soft drinks you like from 1 to 5, you are being asked to rank them in an ordinal scale of preference.

To explain this further, if you have Mountain Dew as your number one soft drink and Pepsi as your second, even though there may be little difference in preference for you (e.g., you like Mountain Dew just a tiny bit more), for another person who listed those soft drinks in the same order, the preference could be great (they would rather drink water than Pepsi if there weren't any Mountain Dew). That being said, ordinal scales only let you interpret gross order -- not the relative positional distances (CSSE 2010).

In an interval type of scale, you would maybe be asked to rate your level of satisfaction -- with a 1 being not satisfied at all and a 10 being the most satisfied you could be. This is called an interval scale because it is assumed to have equidistant points between each of the scale elements. This basically means that we can interpret differences in the distance along the scale. When you put this along side of an ordinal scale, you can see that in an ordinal scale you.