In the context of global education informatization, digitization, network interconnection, and media convergence, the way of understanding human knowledge, its presentation, dissemination channels, and cognitive environment have undoubtedly been reconstructed. The educational concepts, educational methods, educational environments and the shape of teaching materials in various countries are facing a huge test. " Internet + " and media convergence under the continuous development of ubiquitous learning, blended learning, project learning, online course learning, etc., a single paper printing type of teaching materials can not fully meet the needs of the new era of education and teaching. As a comprehensive product of the three major fields of education, publishing and information technology, digital teaching materials and digital teaching and learning resources, which integrate text, audio, video, pictures and animation, have emerged and developed rapidly, and have become an important resource for students' learning and teachers' teaching, as well as a necessary carrier for curriculum implementation. In addition to their scientific and pedagogical nature, their core features include accessibility, all-media, deep interactivity and experience. Practice has shown that digital teaching materials and resources also affect the quality of curriculum, teaching and evaluation, and the development of students' worldview, outlook on life and values. Therefore, it is especially important to look outside the developed countries to see the quality evaluation standard system of digital teaching materials and resources, and look inside the current situation of construction and management of digital teaching materials and resources in China to try to build evaluation standards for digital teaching materials and resources.
1
Digital teaching materials and resources in major developed countries, the quality of the evaluation standard system analysis
(a) the evaluation standard system development started early, keep pace with the times, and continue to increase efforts and rapid development
British educational Informatization guidance and management of education and communication technology bureau in 2007 to develop and promulgate the British digital learning resources quality guidelines. Turkish scholars proposed a quality evaluation method for online learning resources in 2008. In the United States, the Steering Committee for Educational Technology in State Government was established in 2001 to provide guidance to state and local governments in selecting high-quality digital teaching and learning resources that meet standards. The International Consortium for K-12 Online Learning in the United States developed national quality standards for online education in 2007 and revised them in 2011. The Department of Education of Prince Edward Island, Canada, while updating the accreditation standards for printed teaching materials, has stepped up its efforts to develop a series of accreditation standards and tools for various types of learning resources, including DVDs, videos, audio-visuals, digitized resources, software and website resources, and so on. These not only provide guidance and quality assurance for the development, use and management of digital teaching materials and resources, but also enrich the research results of teaching materials evaluation from the theoretical and practical levels.
(2) The development and revision of the evaluation standard system is mainly based on laws and regulations, relying on major projects, and combining the dynamics of curricular and pedagogical reforms as well as the characteristics of digital resources
The United States Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Section 508 provides a list of conditions required for the readability of various digital resources, which has become a recognized guideline for the assessment of the readability of electronic resources. readability, and has become a recognized guideline for assessing the readability of electronic resources. In Japan, with the development of IT technology and the adoption of the Cologne Charter, the "Millennium Plan" was proposed in 2000, and the Cabinet deployed the "i-Japan Strategy" through the "Future School Promotion Project", "Learning Innovation Project", "Learning Innovation Program", and the "Future Schools Project". In Japan, with the development of IT technology and the adoption of the Cologne Charter, the "Millennium Plan" was put forward in 2000, and the Cabinet deployed the "i-Japan Strategy" to promote information education and the construction of digital resources through a number of national projects such as the "Future School Promotion Project", the "Learning Innovation Project", and the "Research and Development of Electronic Textbooks". In 2008, the Australian National Curriculum was promulgated, and the federal, state and territory governments collaborated on the "Digital Education Revolution" project, aiming to bring about sustainable and meaningful changes in teaching and learning in all Australian schools. In 2016, the French Ministry of Education, together with the Agence Fran?aise de Développement (AFD),**** launched the "Innovative Digital Schools and Rural Program" to support primary schools in rural areas. "In 2019, the German federal government officially launched the "Digital Agreement for Schools" project, planning to invest 500 million euros per year for the next five years in the construction of school informatization platforms. In addition, many countries develop the evaluation standard system of digital resources by proposing the principle of "learner-centered", taking "learner experience" as the starting point, and carrying out timely revision and improvement of the standard in conjunction with the characteristics of the digital resources themselves and the frequency of iterative updating.
(3) The purpose of evaluation is more prominent in providing and sharing high-quality resources for teachers and students, promoting balanced education, and fostering and enhancing the skills and literacy of all learners
When the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are developing and updating their evaluation standards, they will safeguard the quality of the resources, and help teachers make professional judgments on the quality of the learning resources in terms of their design, screening In developing and updating their assessment standards, countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have made it a major objective to ensure the quality of resources, to help teachers make professional judgments about the design, selection, and use of learning resources, and to realize the sharing of high-quality resources and the provision of balanced opportunities for education. In particular, it is important to facilitate access to digital resources for all learners, and to ensure that digital resources are accessible to students with reading, visual and hearing impairments, as well as physical impairments and disabilities. For example, in the United Kingdom, educational institutions are required by law to ensure that no learner is denied the full enjoyment of the right to education on the grounds of physical or cognitive impairment, ethnicity, social background and gender. Teachers are required to use inclusive teaching methods and resources that meet the needs of all learners.
In addition, focusing on the development of learners' digital literacy, soft power, communication skills, online etiquette and safety, higher order thinking skills, project management skills and other comprehensive skills has become a key consideration for many countries in the establishment of the purpose of evaluation of digital teaching materials and resources. For example, the United States has proposed the "digital citizenship" standard, which provides learners with learning experiences to enhance their digital citizenship; it also strengthens higher-order thinking training, especially the enhancement of critical, creative and logical thinking skills. The Ministry of Education of British Columbia, Canada, has proposed six dimensions of digital literacy for K-12 students, including the use of digital tools to access, evaluate and use information.
(4) Evaluation Subjects and Evaluation Methods are More Diverse, and the Selection and Adoption of Evaluation Criteria are More Varied
Compared with the evaluation of traditional teaching materials, many countries are more diversified and enriched in terms of the subjects of evaluation of digital teaching materials and resources as well as the methods of evaluation. Evaluation subjects include administrators, educational technologists, subject specialists, users and so on, and different subjects focus on different points. For example, administrators focus on evaluating the systematicity, richness, organization, accuracy, efficiency, security, stability, etc. of the resources, while users are more concerned about whether the resources are interesting, practical, friendly and easy-to-operate interfaces, and cost-effective. Evaluation methods mainly include metadata analysis, combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, combination of online and offline assessment, web metrics, web link analysis, and so on.
Some countries (such as the United States) did not require the country to adopt a unified evaluation standards and tools, but allows each state and each school to take a variety of ways to choose or develop evaluation standards and tools according to local conditions. There are three main ways to do this: first, select some indicators from the relevant standards issued by the state as the main evaluation indicators, plus 1-3 other indicators, assigning a degree of hierarchy to form an evaluation tool. The second is the direct adoption of ready-made evaluation standards, such as the "Open Educational Resources Evaluation Scale" developed by the non-profit organization Achieve. Third, the state government, in cooperation with universities or third-party evaluation organizations, **** with the development of evaluation standards and tools to meet the needs of the region.
(5) Evaluation theory emphasizes data-driven, learning analytics and constructivism
The theoretical support of textbook evaluation has been developed in many countries. For example, the German "Textbook Quality: A Guide to Textbook Standards" is supported by Bakhtin's theory of speech genres and Vygotsky's theory of cultural development. In recent years, scholars in the United States have attempted to use the "learning analytics" platform to build a framework for evaluating open textbooks (digital resources), i.e., using the data-driven features of learning analytics to obtain data and information on learners' use of open textbooks online and offline and to measure, collect, analyze, and illustrate the results, reports, and evidence-based findings and reports for textbook developers, teachers, and policymakers, among others. The data-driven nature of learning analytics is used to obtain information about learners' use of open educational materials online and offline, and to collect, analyze, and explain the data.
There are also theories such as constructivist learning theory, collaborative learning theory, affective theory, and machine learning, which are both the theoretical basis for the development of digital teaching and learning resources and provide support for the evaluation of the quality of digital resources. Especially in the development and interpretation of evaluation dimensions and indicators can find support from these theories.
(F) Evaluation dimensions and indicators are designed to facilitate independent learning, in-depth learning, technological interaction, and formative evaluation, and to meet the needs of "private customization" of learners at different levels
Although the evaluation framework of digital resources varies from country to country, dimensions and indicators are not the same in all countries, Although the evaluation frameworks, dimensions and indicators of digital resources vary from country to country, some ****same features can be found through analysis. First, the evaluation framework generally includes evaluation of course content, evaluation of instructional design, evaluation of technical support, and evaluation of application and management, or takes these as the main dimensions. Second, based on the characteristics of digital resources themselves and the rapid development of the Internet and media convergence, the evaluation dimensions and indicators place more emphasis on providing learners with opportunities for independent learning and deep learning, which is conducive to cultivating learners' higher-order thinking skills and promoting the interaction between resources and learners and learning contexts. Thirdly, based on big data analysis, it provides opportunities for personalized learning and practice, meets the need for "private customization", enhances the comprehensive ability to solve practical problems, and emphasizes the use of formative evaluation. For example, in Germany, the electronic content of textbooks and the quality standards of e-textbooks include four major indicators, each of which is clearly explained and described. For example, "the extent to which e-textbooks address students' corresponding abilities, interests and prior knowledge, the extent to which their structure facilitates a variety of possible cognitive trajectories, provides a more flexible approach for each student, and the extent to which they provide space for interactive learning". The United States has recently released a series of quality standards for online education, emphasizing that digital teaching resources should be able to support human-computer intelligent interaction, teacher-student interpersonal interaction, teaching-behavior interaction, and parental involvement interaction in terms of media form, language use, and intensity level, and should contribute to the self-adaptation of different groups of teacher-student users. The UK emphasizes more on the importance of formative assessment in the quality guidelines for digital learning resources. It is clear that formative assessment refers to the assessment method in which teachers focus on affirming students' behavior and ability development in the process of teaching, and providing timely feedback on the progress of students' mastery of knowledge and skills. Digital learning resources can be designed to make fast and accurate feedback on the accuracy of learning answers, which not only help students understand what they need to improve and how to improve, but also provide a good basis for teachers to assess the progress of students, and can even be empowered to achieve learning behavior diagnosis, intelligent push and so on. The highlight of the "Open Educational Resources Evaluation Scale" commonly used in the evaluation of digital teaching materials and resources in American institutions of higher education is that the quality of technical interaction, the quality of teaching tasks and practical activities, and the provision of in-depth learning opportunities are regarded as important evaluation indicators. It is explicitly stated that digital teaching resources should provide exercises (practical) activities designed to practice and strengthen certain skills and knowledge. The aim is to deepen understanding of the subject matter and mastery of basic techniques and processes, which helps to encourage learners to engage in at least one deep learning skill and involves assessment across domains.
It is important to emphasize that to ensure and improve the overall quality of online education in the country, a system of quality standards and guarantees for online education programs, curricula, instruction, and resources needs to be considered in an integrated manner. The United States has recently released a series of updated national quality standard systems for online education at the K-12 level, including the National Quality Standards for Online Education Programs, the National Quality Standards for Online Courses, and the National Quality Standards for Online Teaching.
Research shows that China's digital teaching materials and resources research started late, the depth is insufficient, favoring teaching, technology and application research, presenting practice first, theory lags behind. At present, China's digital teaching and learning resources in the development, use and management of policy regulations, laws and regulations, standards system and evaluation and supervision of the existence of shortcomings. Therefore, it is necessary to follow the international frontier, construct and improve the evaluation standards of China's digital teaching materials and resources, and explore the countermeasures and suggestions to strengthen the construction and management of China's digital teaching materials and resources.
2
Constructing and Improving Evaluation Standards for China's Digital Teaching Materials and Resources
Based on the current state of development of China's digital teaching materials and resources and the international development trend, we try to put forward the proposal of taking "based on the country and looking ahead to the globe" as the starting point, and emphasizing on Comprehensive, scientific, concise, and logical as the design concept, fairness, sharing, and orientation to all learners as the goal, constructivism, learning analytics, and machine learning as the theoretical support, students' learning experience as the center, all-media, deep interactivity, and experiential features unique to digital resources as the main basis, and emphasis on higher-order competence, accessibility, personalization, and formative evaluation as the characteristics, the preliminary construction of China's The evaluation standard of teaching materials and resources in China is initially constructed (see Table 1). It consists of main dimensions, evaluation indicators and degree of compliance. The main dimensions include seven aspects: content, teaching, technical design, evaluation, provision of in-depth learning opportunities, accessibility and practicality, and safety; each dimension includes a number of specific indicators and conformity judgments, which attempt to reflect the characteristics of comprehensive, concise, reasonable and operable, and are intended to provide a reference for the improvement of the assessment and management of the quality of China's digital teaching materials and resources.
3
Countermeasures and Suggestions for Strengthening the Construction and Management of China's Digital Teaching Materials and Resources
(1) Establishing the concept of "big teaching materials", and coordinating the planning of the construction and management of traditional teaching materials and digital teaching materials, to supplement and improve the national teaching materials construction planning and management.
China's education informatization development has entered the 2.0 era. In the context of building a strong educational country and accelerating the modernization of education, it is necessary to update and supplement the concept of "teaching materials", establish the concept of "big teaching materials", and coordinate the planning of the construction and management of traditional teaching materials and digital teaching materials. Firstly, based on the planning, construction and management of national teaching materials and the cultivation of innovative talents, we should do a good job in the overall planning and top-level design of China's digital teaching materials and resources for primary and secondary schools and universities in terms of guiding ideology, basic principles, construction goals, key tasks and implementation guarantees, in order to improve the national planning of teaching materials construction for primary and secondary schools and universities; secondly, we should study and introduce measures for digital teaching materials and resource management in terms of development and design, quality requirements, technological support, assessment and selection, service updating and guarantee supervision. The second is to develop and introduce measures for digital teaching materials and resource management, as the fifth "measure" supporting the "planning"; the third is to further refine the corresponding review or evaluation standards for teaching materials in accordance with different teaching material management methods, so as to weave a dense "standard" grid and make up for shortcomings in a timely manner. Thirdly, to further refine the corresponding standards for reviewing or evaluating teaching materials for different teaching material management methods, so as to weave a dense "standard" grid and make up for shortcomings and plug loopholes in time. This will help to realize the completeness and scientificity of the construction of China's teaching materials system as well as the standardization and refinement of management .
(2) Establish the quality standard system of digital teaching materials and resources construction, and improve the management system and mechanism
In order to ensure the quality of the construction of digital teaching materials and resources, it is necessary to formulate the relevant laws and regulations and policies and methods, and to establish the quality standard system and management mechanism of digital teaching materials and resources as soon as possible. According to the characteristics and types of digital teaching materials and resources, a system of quality standards can be established. They mainly include evaluation standards for different types of digital teaching materials and resources, selection standards, accessibility standards, learner data privacy protection standards, intellectual property and copyright protection and authorization licensing standards, access and monitoring and related technical standards, and related network security standards. It is possible to build an all-round, multi-dimensional and three-dimensional system of quality evaluation standards for online learning programs, courses, teaching and resources under the guidance of the innovative theory of informatization teaching with Chinese characteristics, and based on the core theories in six areas: creative thinking theory, new constructivism theory, deep integration theory, new learning and teaching teaching design theory, new theory of children's thinking development, and theory of language awareness, in order to improve the quality of online learning programs, courses, teaching and resources in China from an overall perspective. The quality of online education in China will be improved in a holistic way.
In terms of a sound institutional mechanism for digital teaching materials and resource management, there is a need to clarify who is in charge, what is in charge, and how to manage. Consideration can be given to adopting a three-tier management model for the state, localities, and institutions, with clear responsibilities, rights, and obligations at all levels. It is recommended to combine the management methods for teaching materials that have been introduced so far, and to develop them on the basis of full investigation and in-depth research, in accordance with the actual situation and trend of the construction and development of digital resources in various places. This includes how to diagnose, monitor and give feedback on all aspects of digital teaching materials and resources planning, development, design, application, management, evaluation, maintenance and updating. At the same time, the methods, strategies and protocols for digital resources and online courses, and teaching quality assessment are clarified. In view of the development of information technology, the speed of iterative updating of online resources and the constant changes in the demand for use, it is recommended that a dynamic management mechanism be established to adjust, improve and perfect the evaluation indexes and management and monitoring methods in a timely manner, so as to guarantee the scientific, standardized and effective management of digital teaching materials and resources.
(3) Cross-border formation of cooperative and innovative teams, and efforts to improve the professionalization of the digital teaching materials and resources construction team
It is recommended to focus on the formation of professional teams for digital teaching materials and resources policy formulation, academic research, resources development and management, and teaching practice at the national level to ensure the healthy and sustained development of digital teaching materials and resources construction in China. Provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) and colleges and universities can build their own professional teams according to the actual situation. According to the needs of daily work and special tasks, teams at all levels can carry out various forms of learning, training, exchanges and sharing on a regular basis, so as to continuously improve the team's executive power. The formation of the team can be considered: in terms of industry fields, it should involve education, publishing, computer, information technology, media and news; in terms of personnel composition, it should include professionals in administration, education research, teaching management, teaching materials development, editing and publishing, network design, operation and maintenance, information technology, artificial intelligence, big data analysis, etc.; and in terms of functional subdivision, it should be divided into top-level design team, content planning team, technical support team, quality assessment team, and technical support team. planning team, technical support team, quality assessment team, maintenance and monitoring team and so on. Team members need to have basic information technology literacy and relevant professional literacy, and through timely updating of relevant knowledge, understand the latest progress and achievements of theories and practices in relevant fields abroad, so as to improve their competence and innovate their working mode. It is recommended to make full use of the advantages of colleges and universities and professional training institutions to offer relevant professional courses, organize graded training, and issue relevant certificates and qualifications. At the same time, improve the reward and incentive mechanism to cultivate more digital teaching materials and resources development and management of leading talents.
To grasp the construction of teaching materials system, we need to increase the construction and management of digital teaching materials and resources from the height of national strategy, talent cultivation and international competition, set up major projects, play a leading role in the demonstration, increase financial investment, advocate cross-border cooperation, and synergize the strength of many parties to break through and solve key and difficult problems. Reduce the construction of low-quality and repetitive digital resources, pursue the development and design of high-quality, distinctive and original resources, and ***build*** enjoy high-quality resources. While reflecting the will of the country and the spirit of the nation, we will closely follow the main line of soul-casting and educating people, gather the strength of all parties, and comprehensively improve the scientific, standardized, refined and internationalized level of the construction and management of all kinds of teaching materials, and work hard to build a strong teaching material country.
Source: Curriculum-Materials-Pedagogy, Issue 5, 2021
Author: Hu Jun (Associate Researcher, Chinese Academy of Education)