Online Course Assessment

I am a member of our university's assessment committee. Additionally, I am a member of my college's assurance of learning committee. While I think assessment is important, I think some people give me too much credit for the work I do on assessment. Having said that, I have found that it can be quite useful for course and hopefully program improvement.

At the course level, I have implemented a pre and post test to get an understanding of student's incoming and outgoing knowledge. That is kind of cool. I can, each semester, show statistically that students are leaving with more knowledge that what they entered the class with. But, the last question on each test is different. On the pre-test, it is a link to a Google Form in which I can gain more insight into student's learning styles. I use a validated instrument for this. For the post-test, I replace that link with an online course evaluation link, also a validated instrument.

Now here's what I have found recently that I like so much about this approach. Because the data is captured in a Google Form, I created summary data from the various items so I could compare the 6 dimensions associated with the instrument. Then, I made graphs for each dimension. Finally, I also created a "graph" of the comments. Once all these were created, I copied the embed code and pasted it into my personal web site for each course in which I had data. Similarly, I created a page in my Blackboard shells title "Course Evaluations". In this way, my students and the public for that matter can see exactly what to expect from my various courses.

What I REALLY like is that as students continue to evaluation my courses, the graphs are automatically updated. This is really cool. What I have found is that I am really good at my networking classes but need to work on my decision support class a little more. I feel somewhat safe regarding the feedback as it is a private link shared through my password protected Blackboard shell so it should only be populated by students. But, it significantly reduces the time and effort on my part and yet can provide students and myself with some meaningful information regarding my classes. For a sample, click the link below:

http://drschuessler.dlinkddns.com:8080/Teaching/Tarleton/BCIS5304/BCIS5304.aspx#sthash.AJNKnvgi.dpbs

If you are interested in the instrument, the information for the article is:
Criteria for Assessing Student Satisfaction with Online Courses
Rothman, Romeo, Brennan, and Mitchel (2011)
International Journal for e-Learning Security, Volume 1, Issue 1/2, March/June 2011.