The present work deals with the transformation of the progressive education approach „Dalton Plan“ into e-learning. This work is the first researched, documented and implemented transfer of a progressive education into the web. Interviews with e-learning experts provide requirements for the use of the Dalton Plan in e-learning. Individual views of the experts are documented using the Concept Mapping approach. The aggregation of these abstract individual views allows to derive requirements for the support of the Dalton Plan Instruments in e-learning. These requirements form the basis of conceptual user interfaces. Because of the transfer of the Dalton Plan approach into a (web-based) e-learning environment changes to the educational instruments are required. Attention has to be payed to the asynchrony of the interaction. Using Java Server Faces technology a Dalton Plan module is implemented for a web-based e-learning platform. This implementation is evaluated by the e-learning experts. The evaluation shows the usefulness of the implemented Dalton Plan instruments. Also the evaluation shows the potential of the approach to knowledge acquisition by means of self-organized learning. The consistent use of the Concept Mapping approach allows to document the transformation and evaluation process in a traceable manner.

Dr. Georg Weichhart

o.Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Christian Stary