Week2 Quality and Evaluation

Post answers to the following questions to your blog and send a short email out to the class about your main points.

· Why is evaluation important to you and how do you define it?
· What sort of evaluations mentioned on the presentation are familiar to you already and why?
· Why is quality important in eLearning?

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Evaluation is…

Definition of evaluation can be found in the webpage of (What is evaluation? 1999)

Evaluation is the analysis and comparison of actual progress vs. prior plans, oriented toward improving plans for future implementation.

Another definition from webpage (What is evaluation?) is listed below:

Evaluation is about using monitoring and other information you collect to make judgements about your project. It is also about using the information to make changes and improvements.

Widely speaking we evaluate all the time. For example, when having a class in a F2F environment we evaluate the situation and change teaching strategies according to students’ response. We might give more explanation and exercises when students are confused, we might go through the course quickly if students are all “switched on “.

I think generally, evaluation is based on asking questions, collecting data or information that answer the questions, through analysis then make the decision and take action to ensure the whole project / system fulfil planned outcome. It can be varied depends on what questions we are asking and what result we would like to get.

Why evaluation is so important to me:

I like the ADDIE model which shows how important the evaluation is. I personally believe evaluation from the beginning of a project is crucial to ensure the whole project is on the right track.

Evaluation can be applied to improve our service and help improving the quality of training / teaching. We can evaluate the effectiveness and quality of our training by asking questions e.g. How do we find if the course material we delivered can be easily accessed and understood by students? Do our students achieve their learning goals? Can they apply the skills they learned into their further study, etc.

What sorts of evaluations mentioned on the presentation are familiar to me already and why?

There are several methods I know or have the experience using it. For example, we do observations for our Level 2 / Level 3 students quite often as part of their assessments.
Personally as a student, I experienced quite a lot more on formative assessment (assuming part of our assignments for this course will be formative assessed?) and summative assessments. I had been asked to fill in questionnaire at the beginning of courses ( guess to provide more info of our learning background to tutors?). Filled in feedback at the end of a course is quite popular and we did it for each of Applied e-learning courses.

From my experience, checklists are more used when assessing if we have achieved the planned outcomes.

Why is quality important in eLearning?

E-learning is different from fact to face learning. Learning material is mainly be accessed digitally. Unlike f2f situation, e-learning tutors are not able to response to students’ questions immediately all the time, neither to get the feedback of teaching by observing students’ activities or talking to students.

So the quality of e-learning is extremely important in e-learning. Assuming following ADDIE model and each stage of the system development has been well evaluated, the e-learning system should be very well designed to meet students’ learning needs and adapt to diverse learning /teaching styles. A good system will help both students and tutors achieve their learning / teaching goals.

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Reference
What is evaluation? (n.d.). Retrieved 03 05, 2009, from Charities Evaluation Services: http://www.ces-vol.org.uk/index.cfm?pg=167

What is evaluation? (1999). Retrieved 3 5, 2009, from SIL International: http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/literacy/referencematerials/GlossaryOfLiteracyTerms/WhatIsEvaluation.htm