WEEK SEVEN AND EIGHT: DRAFT EVALUATION PLAN

Introduction:

This plan is going to describe an evaluation of the future implementation of the CCNA Exploration courses in the blended format at the Manukau Institute of Technology. The study will be conducted by Hervé Carpentier.

Background:

The CCNA course is part of the Cisco Networking Academy Program and is has been preparing the students for the Cisco Certified Network Associate certification examination worldwide for more than ten years. The present implementation of the course at M.I.T. is face to face, with all course materials accessible through a web browser from anywhere with an internet connection. At the present time, the four parts of this course are delivered over two semesters in a face to face environment.

The four part of this course are :

1. Networking Basics

2. Routers and Routing Basics

3. Switching Basics and Intermediate Routing

4. WAN Technologies

The courses are level 5 and 6 courses

The amount of material to study has increased greatly in recent years, and it has been decided at national level to deliver the full course over four semester within the Bachelor of Engineering Technology program. The practical work involved in the course is supporting the theory and vice versa. This course has been described as using

The students can access the laboratories to complete the practical work at any time, 7 days per week, when the room is not used by a class.

The students can complete the formative assessments (end of chapter tests) 24*7; they get immediate feedback on their mistakes. To encourage them to complete them, we are the present time counting the marks towards a small percentage of the final results (10% at the present time).

The assessment structure includes a combination of on-line tests, and a paper examination.

Purposes:

The purpose of this evaluation is to

1. Assess the effectiveness of the present usage of eLearning tools.

2. Consider the use of further tools and activities to enhance and facilitate the student learning.

3. Identify if Blended learning would improve the delivery of the course to the students

I will be using the following two guidelines taken from http://elg.massey.ac.nz:

a. TT6 Are online activities available that will enable students to assess their learning?

There already are several assessment tools I am using for the present format of the course. It would be interesting to see if I could develop or use further tools to enhance student learning. The redevelopment of the course means that there will be more time for the students to work to study the course and would therefore give use the opportunity to introduce more online activities that would enable her to enhance their learning.

b. The second guideline is inspired from TD1 "Is the use of e-learning appropriate to the intended learning outcomes?"
Is the use of blended learning more appropriate to achieve the intended learning outcome?
It would be interesting to find out if using a blended learning format would a progress on the present delivery of the course.It might be that my present use of eLearning tool in this context is not the best match for the learning outcomes.

Audiences:

The primary and secondary audiences of this evaluation are staff and students involved the teaching of the course. This will probably extended to the Cisco Account Manager looking after our academy since he or she will be involved in the approval for changing the delivery of the course to blended learning.

A third audience will be the staff and students of the Evaluation of eLearning for Best Practice course, to which the evaluation will be submitted for assessment.

Decisions:

The findings of this study will influence the decision on how to run the CCna course from the firsty semester of 2010, and the set of eLearning tools used to run it.

Questions

The questions I am attempting to answer with this study are:

-Are the on-line activities used in the delivery of the course in the present format sufficient for students to assess their progress?

-Are their any other online tools I could use to enhance the students learning and experience?

-Would moving from face to face delivery to blended delivery improve learning experience of the students and therefore improve their achievement?

The paradigm that I will be using is the Eclectic-Mixed Methods-Pragmatic Paradigm. The model I will be implementing is is the multiple type evaluation model.

I am planning to use the feedback of CCNA students following the present format of the course, as well as the ideas and suggestions from colleagues in MIT or other institutions teaching the course to identify improvement and adjustment at an early stage in the redevelopment of the course.

Methods:

I am intending on on using focus groups and questionnaires to get the information from students and staff; there may be issues with the publication of the results of the questionnaires. I will need to investigate if the Ethics Committee at M.I.T. needs to be involved.

Sample:

The students involved are the present students involved on the CCNA course; The colleagues I will work with are:

the other lecturer teaching the CCNA course

colleagues from other Cisco Academies (two or three)

Instrumentation:

Questionnaires delivered to the students through the Blackboard-eMIT interface.

Discussions through focus groups will be used to further develop some of the ideas/information gathered via the questionnaires.

I will discuss the proposal with former colleagues involved in the teaching of the same course in an academy located in the U.K. This will probably be done through Skype.

Limitations:

This study will look at the specific implemtation of the CCNA course as taught at MIT.

Depending on how many students are willing to take parts in the questionnaire and discussions, the sample size might be small.

This project is only looking at some aspect of the course.

Logistics:

I will conducts all aspect of this evaluation; I might have to get support from the eMIT support desk to set the questionnaires up for the students.

Time Line:

This evaluation is part of a bigger project whose deadlines are as follow

1. May to August 2009 : collecting the information from students and colleagues and take it into consideration to develop the new format

2. August 2009 : getting approval from the Technical Expert Group at MIT and Management for the Blended format, then write the proposal to be approved to deliver in the Blended format by Cisco Systems.

3. September 2009: sending the proposal to Cisco System.

4. November 2009: reply for the approval; if positive, developing the new format

5. February 2009: delivering the course as blended delivery.

Budget:

My spare time will be used, as I am working full time on the present delivery of various courses in the School of Electrical Engineering and trade.
I am planning to use electronic documents as much as possible, cutting the cost of printing and photocopying.