Evolve: evaluate, review, and revise your online course

From the School of Professional Studies

 Evaluate your course   

Once you have taught your course, you will be expected to review, evaluate, and ultimately to revise your course as the last step in your Course Development Process.  

For the purpose of assessing your course you should consider:

         What worked?

         What didn’t? why?

         What could be improved? How?

 Once you conclude the delivery phase you can use this information to review, evaluate, and document the revisions you want to make to your course in anticipation of the next time you teach it.

 Things to think about when ending an online course

         How will you end the course?

         Will you send a group “good-by” email or post something in your course?

         Will you send students their final grades via email? Is there an online mechanism for this built in to your course? Will the students get their grades from your institution via some other mechanism?

         What is the end date for your course?

         How will you deal with students who do not complete the course on time?

         Do you want to survey your students for feedback?

         Does your institution require and implement a course evaluation?

         Have you made/kept an copy of your course for yourself?

 Evaluate your course

This is the last step in your online course development process. Once you conclude the teaching phase of your course, you should evaluate the course and your experience. Review any notes you made to yourself as you taught and review student feedback to assess the necessary improvements and revisions to the structure or activities in your course.

  You may want to think about:

         What worked?

         What didn’t? Why?

         What could be improved? How?

         Were your discussions successful?

         Were your assignments and other activities successful?

         Did you get through all the modules in the course?

         Did most students complete the course?

         How was the workload for you and for your students? Were you able to keep up?

         Was there anything missing?

         Were there any points in the course where you noticed that students did not do an activity, or did not understand the activity?

 You may want to ask a colleague or instructional designer to do a review of your course after it has concluded.

 If you conducted a culminating activity in your course as recommended, or a midterm feedback forum, review these student comments as part of the evaluation and revision planning process for your course. In addition, look at the types of questions your students had and where they had them. Activities, assignments, and areas in your course that did not go as expected or intended may indicate a need for revision. If there was any apparent confusion or a bunch of questions about the same thing, that most likely indicates that more instructions, clearer instructions, or details are necessary.