Feedback from multiple sources will help to improve the quality of one's course. It is important to remember that students are consumers and we want them to be satisfied with their learning experience.
Evaluations are essential to improve and be an effective instructor.
Instructors need to use various methods to evaluate their course delivery and content to adjust for quality improvement.
There are a variety of tools for evaluating a course and courses need to be continually evaluated, updated, and changed. A stagnate course, even if it started out okay, quickly becomes stale and outdated. Student evaluations are important, but they are only one source of data.
Nancy Tosh
Multiple evalutions are needed for a successful course outline.
Multiple evaluations are important, as long as they are not marred in the quagmire of bureaucratic decision making about
teaching and test scores as a means of evaluation.
Each ourse should be evaluated periodically to improve the learning as well as curriculum, quality assurance, professional development, and personnel actions. Teachers, students, and administrators are all stakeholders in this process. Revisions should include information from multiple sources and multiple methods. Methods of evaluation may include course gades, syllabus scans, assignments and assessments, reflective question tools and portfolios as well as interviews or focus groups.
Multiple evaluations are needed for learning. It is important to use multiple assessments when assessing something because a single assessment might be flawed or inaccurate in some way.
This is a concept that I have struggled with a lot in the past. I feel that I still am not 100% certain as to how to "close the loop" using evaluations of student work.
It is important to remember that just becasue you see and understand the course as an instructor does not mean your students see and understand the course the same way. So evaluations from many different points is important.
"Closing the Loop" actually begins before the start of a class. Taking the time to review the syllabus, course objectives, reference material, rubics, etc. is a necessary place to start. Evalution for change or revisions should be an ongoing process throughout the course, and culminate in a multi-driven evaluation at the end of the course as was stated. In some cases you find that the "Loop" has already been closed. In whatever circumstance, building flexibility into a course is key.
Multiple evaluations are a great way to keep the course up to date, accurate, and it also encourages the instructor to perform their best.
In this module I learned that "closing the loop" will require feedback by multiple stakeholders using a variety of tools and includes both qualitative and quantitative data.
As a professional educator, revising my courses and closing the loop are essential to improving the quality of my future courses. This lesson shared some additional sources of data to use when evaluating my courses. In the past, I think I've probably relied too heavily on course surveys. While course surveys are critically important, I plan to also focus more on making sure the learning objectives match with the syllabus and industry expectations. I'd also like to try the focus group approach if students would be willing to have a deeper conversation and reflect on all parts of the course.
Proper evaluation of learners and courses requires multiple methods and techniques.
To use different forms of evaluating learning.
I like the ideas of having multiple points of data for reviewing a course. The students may be the most important, but are not looking at the course as an educator.
Never forget that students are more than just the product in your course; they are also consumers.
Students, the institution, and the teaching and professional community comprise the major stakeholders who have interest in helping teachers close the loop in their online courses. Data and feedback are needed from each of those three groups.
It is also important to remember that students are consumers in the course and they can be valuable sources of feedback. Since online students don't have the opportunity to have casual conversation it is important that teachers plan for communication experienes with students and between students.
Spot-checking student learning is a way to continually evaluate the progress of students.
