03.23.07
Evaluating Online Courses
Online courses have taken off, but are they all good? They range from PowerPoint slides without narration (i.e. “read the chapter and look at the PowerPoints”) all the way to sophisticated courses that use a variety of technologies, foster a great deal of interaction, and have actual learning taking place! How can you tell where your course falls?
A good place to start the evaluation is using a tool that was developed at the Illinois Online Network. It is called the Quality Online Course Initiative and it was two years in development, taking the best of many other instruments that are out there and placing everything into one easy-to-use rubric. The rubric framework makes it straightforward to use to evaluate a course.
If you are just starting out developing online courses, I would highly recommend that you look at the rubric before and during the development process.
bethgallob said,
March 26, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Norm,
Thanks for the ION resource. As a consultant for Elluminate, I am just beginning research to identify academic institutions that are tracking the metrics of synchronous online learning. In addition, I would like to include tools in the paper to help those who are not tracking to begin to track. The idea here is to provide the ammunition instructors, department, schools, etc. need to continue to receive funding for these initiatives.
If you know of anyone who is tracking things like enrollments, course completion rates, and exam scores in conjunction with live eLearning, please let me know. It would be great to gather some hard statistics about improved outcomes.
Thanks!
Beth Gallob for Elluminate
beth@gallobcomm.com