Another integral part of curriculum design, face-to-face or online, would be plans for the course evaluation. How would you determine effectiveness of your course to inform the future improvement and development? One of the most commonly used evaluation tools is a student course evaluation form at the end of the semester. However, collecting this feedback throughout the course may help improve things as you go along. This can be particularly valuable if eLearning is a course of innovation. You could also use various data collected from students’ assignments, assessments, and feedbacks at various points of the learning to inform you the effectiveness of the curriculum and adjust your instructions on time accordingly. You could design and use an evaluation rubric to collect data systematically. At York University, one important tool we provide is a ready-made rubric, Quality Matters. Quality Matters (QM) is an instructor-centred peer review process designed to confirm the quality of online courses and the online components of blended learning courses. QM emerged from a consortium of US colleges and universities tasked with developing a sustainable quality assurance process for online learning courses. A QM rubric tailored for York University can be requested from teaching@yorku.ca
Key questions for planning your course evaluation plan,
- What kind of assessments and data collection are you planning in order to effectively evaluate your project and inform efforts to improve the course in future offerings (e.g. midterm evaluations, peer-observation and feedback, journal, teaching assessments, evaluations of student learning, student ratings of instruction)?
- Assuming evaluation activities yield information to suggest your blended learning course should continue, what measures will you and your faculty or department take to ensure the continuation and improvement of the course? How will you share what you have learnt with others in your faculty?
*Adapted from Garrison, D. R. & Vaughan, N. D. (2008). Blended learning in higher education: Framework, principals, and guidelines. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
