Evaluating Distance Education Courses & Programs
What is evaluation?*
While the terms assessment and evaluation are often used synonomously, for the purposes of this site, evaluation will refer to measuring aspects of your teaching, courses, and programs. It will not refer to assessing student learning.
Why should you evaluate?
There are many reasons to evaluate your courses and programs, but let's take look at just a few:
- You spend your valuable time creating what you hope will be great learning experiences for your students. Evaluation will let you know if that time is well-spent.
- You notice that students are not doing as well as you hoped on a test. Evaluation will help you pinpoint what you might need to change to help improve their understading of the content as demonstrated on a test.
- You notice that your course has a high attrition rate. Evaluation will help you determine why students are dropping your course.
- You continue to get students who are not prepared for your course even though there are pre-requisites listed. Evaluation can help you understand what is happening.
Who benefits from evaluation?
Of course, the real answer is "everyone benefits." Courses are improved so students are learning more and are feeling more engaged. Word spreads and more students begin enrolling so the university benefits in terms of prestige and dollars. Meanwhile, improved learning in your course means that they go on to other courses being more prepared so entire programs become more sucessful. More students graduate with better understanding and then go on to get jobs in the community and so the community benefits from better educated and qualified students. Then, the world gets better - all because you evaluated your course. :) Did I go overboard? LOL. Maybe...and maybe not.