BOOK REVIEW

Yair Levy, Assessing the Value of E-Learning Systems,
Information Science Publishing, 2006.
ISBN-13: 978-1591407270

In this book Levy starts out presenting a literature review of the terms value, belief, attitudes and behaviour which concludes that value is the construct that impacts belief that in turn impacts attitudes which impacts behaviour, hence value is the most important term as it underlies the other terms. Levy further reviews the terms value, satisfaction and effectiveness, and although behaviour affects satisfaction, hence value indirectly affects satisfaction he concludes that an e-learning system is perceived effective when learners value the characteristics of the system as highly important and at the same time are highly satisfied by those characteristics. From these observations Levy has constructed a conceptual model where learner’s value of a system and their satisfaction with the system represent the effectiveness of that system by plotting in the different scores of value / satisfaction of the characteristics of the system into a grid. For example, if a characteristic is perceived as high value and highly satisfactory then it is perceived to be an effective characteristic. Out of this conceptual model Levy creates two different tools which further describe and model effectiveness. The first tool is the Learners’ Value Index of Satisfaction (LeVIS Index), which is the scores of value and satisfaction multiplied, hence providing the researcher with a single result describing the effectiveness of a characteristic. Secondly Levy creates effectiveness curves where fixed LeVIS index scores are utilised by dividing them with possible satisfaction scores. These are plotted into a grid creating effectiveness grids from which the researcher can gain further knowledge about how easy or difficult it is to improve effectiveness. These tools should help researchers in analysing complete e-Learning systems and help in the process of identifying dimensions of the system where for instance effectiveness improvement is easily performed or where improvements are necessary.

Karsten Oster Lundqvist
University of Reading, UK

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