EURIDICE Project: The Evaluation of Image Database Use in Online Learning

Digital images and image databases can support a wide range of learning objectives. The EURIDICE project aims to assess the requirements for the image databases, on one hand, and to incorporate images into higher education teaching (HEI) teaching, on the other. The aim of this paper is to analyse the tasks and process of evaluation of the EURIDICE image repository offered for e-learning purposes as a part of the whole Project. It relates image use to the e-learning methodologies adopted at the partner universities, describes the project and the evaluation process that was designed to assess the contents and scope, the search capabilities, indexing and description of images, and incorporation of the offered resource into the study process. The results of evaluation by one educational partner show that image databases can be effectively integrated with e-learning platforms. It also makes clear that the requirements for image databases expressed by students and teachers are high. Therefore, the design of the database and retrieval system has to meet these demands before the service could be fully developed on a commercial basis. (Examples of study tasks, associated elements of observation, and student responses are appended.)