The only problem I have encountered with what is for me a new tool, is that it does not seem to be running on Firefox. Never mind; nothing is perfect.
So, the three questions to answer for this week are:
1. Why is evaluation important to you and how do you define it?
2. What sort of evaluations mentioned on the presentation are familiar to you already and why?
3. Why is quality important in eLearning?
Evaluation is important as a tool giving me feedback on how to improve my work. One aspect to this is the evaluation of the output from the students which in turn helps me to fine-tune my teaching.
But more important, it is needed at all stages of the teaching process, from creating the course to putting resources and material available to the students.
It is difficult to assess what sort of evaluations mentioned in the presentation are familiar to me; nothing came as a surprise. I think that any teacher or lecturer would use the different types mentioned to assess various aspects of a course or student progress.
Quality is much more important eLearning than in traditional teaching as you do not have the same interaction between the participants; I know when presenting a topic to a traditional class that someone is stuck on a concept by observing the class. Further clues appear when they are trying to apply the theory in the subsequent labs.
There are quality issues specific to eLearning, and they cannot be ignored in a context where there is a lot of pressure on staff in the New Zealand tertiary sector to deliver most courses using the blended or remote teaching format. It looks like it is too often considered a cost saving exercise, and the temptation is to deliver the eLearning course without paying attention to its specific challenges.
These are, but not limited to:
-the appropriate use of the specific tools.
-how to engage the students in a remote teaching environment
-how to provide support for these students
-how to conduct summative assessments and provide adequate formative assessments for these students.
Posts
Hi Hervé
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that we wont have same interaction with the students compared elearning with f2f course. We can 'fine-tune' our teaching by observing students. But it's hard to do so with eteaching. So evaluation on elearning system will help to improve the quality.
Hi Herve
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that "Evaluation is important as a tool giving me feedback on how to improve my work." I have found, coming from a F2F teaching background and moving gradually into blended delivery and then as an eLearning Advisor and Developer, that the transition from F2F teaching and fully online development for staff is somewhat unsupported for many tertiary staff. I believe that ensure quality courses are developed requires a minimum 'best practice' checklist before a site is released to students. So many times I am working with staff who have said ... "I just have to get some resources into Moodle for now. Once that is done, next time I teach it I'll see if I've got any more time to plan more effectively! Never mind the design in a totally different environment! Given there are no quality control measures in place, we as advisors can only advise :-)
Kay Lewis