Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference
Teaching, Learning, & Technology
The Challenge Continues
March 30-April 1, 2003
Assessment Tools for Web Courses
|
By: Janet Buzzard, Trish Maguire |
Abstract
This session will present an approach for assessing Web based instruction. As a teaching institution, we strive to evaluate and assess teaching and learning. One of the stumbling blocks the College of Business came across is that some of our courses are taught on the Web. To accommodate this, we have devised a method of evaluating the course both through student evaluations, peer evaluations, and course rubrics.
Description
As a teaching institution, Eastern New Mexico University strives for excellence in assessing teaching and learning. Traditionally taught courses go through a thorough evaluation process. The university requires a student evaluation every semester in every class. In addition to this, the College of Business utilizes a nationally normed student evaluation form that has been created by the IDEA Center. This ensures that the objectives set by each course are being met and are validated on a national level. In addition to these instruments being administered, peer evaluations are conducted in the College of Business.
Even with this thorough evaluation process, one of the stumbling blocks the College of Business came across is that some of our courses are taught on the Web. We have tried using the traditional methods for evaluating teaching and learning by mailing the same forms to the students with self addressed stamped envelopes. However, the return rate has fallen below twenty five percent, which is too low compared to traditionally taught classes. We have developed a student evaluation tool that will be administered on line for the first time this semester.
To assist in the designing of the web course as well as assessing key points from the syllabus, we have developed a course evaluation rubric to be used by the instructor for self evaluation. Key objectives are defined and the rubric is built around assessing these course objectives. This tool is helpful in formative assessment of Web based courses.
We have not, however, conducted peer evaluations due to the constraints of a Web based course. As a result, we devised a way to conduct peer evaluations of Web based courses. The objective was to provide a peer appraisal of the faculty member's course presentation and instructional material. The faculty member teaching a web-based course requests a COB faculty member to conduct a peer evaluation. The teaching faculty member will provide the COB peer faculty with access to the web base course by adding the reviewer to the course roster for an agreed upon time not to exceed one week. The reviewer uses a scale of excellent, above average, average, below average, poor and don't know to evaluate the course presentation and instructional material. Although this has only been used for a couple of semesters, it seems to be an effective technique for receiving external evaluation and feedback.