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Before teaching an online or ITV class, you should assess your own readiness for the distance learning environment. Take an interactive online instructor self-assessment, or simply ask yourself the following questions:
Will I be able to:
Project my presence in an online or ITV environment?
Cope with delayed feedback?
Do I know:
What I'm trying to achieve with my instruction?
What knowledge, skills and attitudes need to be taught?
How much content I need in my instruction?
What resources and strategies I can/will use?
How I'll structure the content?
How to assess whether students have met the objectives of the course?
Do I have good writing skills?
Can I communicate clearly and effectively through email?
From the students' point of view:
Successful
distance education instructors:
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For each assessment you create, ask:
Students should be fully informed about the criteria, content, and methods
of each assessment – and when possible, examples should be provided.
As you develop each assessment, plan for the 4 R’s: student reinforcement,
review, repetition, remediation (by phone or email, too).
Students should be able to assess the adequacy of their responses to assessment exercises. Students need:
Evaluations should be done regularly, be easily accessible and created with an eye toward the future.
There are two main types of evaluations,
formative and summative:
Formative evaluations are ongoing throughout the instructional process,
and are generally administered to ensure that the course will achieve its
stated goals. Traditional examples of formative evaluations might include
self-addressed stamped postcards that are handed out after each session or
simple forms that a student collects and returns to a departmental contact.
In the distance learning environment, an instructor might have an online evaluation
form that focuses on the course strengths/weaknesses, technical/delivery
concerns, content areas in need of further coverage.
A summative evaluation is conducted upon course completion to determine the overall effectiveness of the class. The focus is on student performance, course relevancy, learner attitudes toward delivery methods, and the instructor's teaching style and effectiveness.
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Ready to get started
creating a course evaluation survey for your class? Click on the compass
to visit a handy Course Evaluation Guidebook. After reading the guide,
check out NETnet's Evaluation
links, and start harvesting and generating questions for your own survey. |
There are many different ways to evaluate a course; it often depends on the discipline, delivery method, and the audience. Historically, schools have relied heavily on quantifiable data. However, research has indicated that in the distance learning environment, qualitative approaches may be preferable to quantitative methods of evaluation, particularly when each remote class is small (thus, [statistically] insignificant). For this reason, researchers suggest that evaluations contain open-ended questions, interviews, participant (and non-participant) observation, or other unobtrusive measures.
For example, one
way of evaluating a course might be to have a facilitator head up a brainstorming
session with students to come up with ways to improve the course.
The best evaluation combines quantitative
measurement of student performance with qualitative methods
to assess information about the attitudes toward the course’s effectiveness
and delivery technology.
Regardless of how much time and effort you
put into preparing your course, it's not until students actually take the
course that you can see what worked well and what needs to be modified.
There is always room for improvement even in the most thoughtfully developed
course, and you should anticipate the need for revision. Your revision plans
can be drawn from the results of the student evaluations, feedback from colleagues
and content specialists, as well as your own thoughts about potential improvements.
Course revisions should begin as soon as the course ends and you have reviewed the feedback from your student evaluations.
Minor revisions might include:
Major revisions
For sample evaluation tools and even more
tips on evaluating your course, your students, and yourself, visit the Evaluation
Tools section of the NETnet website. You can also find examples of FREE
interactive self-assessments by browsing through the
Interaction Aides section. The quiz software allows you to test your students'
knowledge and refer them to specific material for remediation in the areas
where they demonstrated weakness.
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Ready
to test your comprehension? Click on the compass to take a quick interactive
self-assessment. Close the quiz window to return to this page. |
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The Northeast Texas Network Consortium Coordinating Office / 11937 Hwy 155 at Hwy 271 / Tyler, TX 75708
phone (903) 877-7510 / fax (903) 877-7430
