Michelle,
You are VERY fortunate to also be able to touch base with students face-to-face (F2F) and make sure you are doing a great job in the online classroom. Keep it up.
However, when you do start to teach online and never see your students, think about how you can take that personal touch you have now and keep it in the online classroom.
Nice job.
For online classes, I find it very difficult to get them to do the standard evaluations that all of our students do. In class, you can hand them the evaluation, tell them to do it and leave the room. With an online class I feel like I have to beg and beg to get them to do it.
I am very fortunate when it comes to evaluations because I often see the students from my online classes at the campus once or twice a week because they either stop in to see me or I have another on-ground class with them. I will informally interview everyone that I see from the online class at various times of the class just to see how they think the class is going, if they would like to see other types of technology used, etc. This seems to work well with revising the current class and future class sessions. I also like to take an informal poll that is set up through our discussion boards. I don’t get a great response, but it gives me an idea of what could be improved.
student evaluations
self evaluations
peer evaluations
I have found the anonymous "open response" evaluations that I get from my students to be both the most "nerve wracking" and also the most helpful. Sometimes hearing a negative comment from a student "stings" a bit at first, but I always learn something that enables me to refine my teaching. I really learn more from the negative comments than I do from the positive comments.
Kim,
Yes, there are many methods that work for a variety of students. The key is to figure out what works for your particulars students in each class.
I do not believe there is a single method here. I believe different things will work for different classes and people.
Emmanuel,
Right on! Getting feedback from students is very helpful. It's also good to get feedback from peers. They both bring different feedback about the course and help you improve the course.
Nice job.
Comprehensive feedback varies in scope. Iterative feedback is comprehensive as well as loop-closing. Feedback must elicit a response in order for the cycle to complete.
Students' evaluation provide the most comprehensive feedback since they are the receptors. Self-evaluation although adds to improving on evaluation may be tainted with bias which is not healthy for the feedback loop. Student evaluations should be taken at the beginning, mid and at the end of the semester in order to cover all aspects of the teaching and learning process.
Peter,
Best question ever - What can I do to improve the course? Great job, Peter.
Thank you.
Hi Dr. Crews,
I love anonymous written student evaluations from as many students as possible, with specific questions regarding all facets of the course. The best question for me is what would you do to improve this course? That's the one that I focus on the most to close the loop.
Regards,
Peter
Jennifer,
I agree. The more feedback you get from a variety of sources, the better. I'm glad you are using rubrics and incorporating the course objectives within them. This is very helpful to students.
When you do your informal interviews, what do you ask the students?
Thank you.
Several sources of feedback can be conducive to assessing the learning progress of a student.
In my opinion, that the summative feedback seems the most appropriate as it helps closing the loop by looking at different aspects.
Not only the grading process is included but alos the self assessment or even an informal interview can be used.
The sole evaluation based on grades seems to be to reductive to clearly assess if the student has met the class objectives.
I believe that feedback should or could from several sources or form of evaluations.
In my opinion, I would focus on two feedback methods. The first one is based on grading the students work based on the class objectives and the grading rubric.
In addition to this approach, I would complete the process with an informal interview that can provide additional information that is not available in the work the student delivers.
I really like using quick assessments like "one-minute papers" or "three clear points, three muddy points," but I'm not quite sure how to incorporate these into my class since I do not control how the points are distributed in my class. Without giving them extra credit or a few extra points, I'm not sure I could get them to respond.
Donna,
You are correct. . .not one thing covers everything. The more feedback you can get in a variety of ways, the better. Pretests let you konw where your students are when you begin the class and the post-test can tell you how far they have come.
Thanks for your input.
Although no one tool nor no one target group will provide enough information to close the loop, I believe that the Pretest/Posttest evaluation method provides a solid start. If learning is not an outcome of the completion of the course, analyzing the data gained from the Pretest/Posttest might provide a clearer path for the next logical steps in selecting other evaluation methods and target groups.
Samuel,
You are right on target. I'm thrilled you get the "with our students" portion of assessment. Various assessments not only help instructors understand how the students are performing and what they understand or don't understand, but they help the students understand what they need to do to improve.
Thanks for your input.
As discussed in the lesson, "Assessment is something that we do with and for our students". This directly relates to evaluating our course and closing the loop. The "with our students is paramount". To this end, I believe that multiple evaluation instruments are vital but communication with the student is the most comprehensive. Communication can ascertain far more information than any other medium. Using other forms of evaluation can illuminate data points that can be used as discussion points, thus closing the loop even more.
Krystal,
Good input. Pre- and post-tests can tell us all a lot. As instructors/facilitators we want to determine if our students are learning and if not, what we need to do to improve the learning process.
Also, pre-tests are helpful as a diagnostic test to see what the students already know. I have used pre-tests to determine how quickly I can cover material or how slowly I may need to explore new content.
Thanks!
Toni, you made a good point about the interviews allowing open-ended questions that will allow them provide as much detail as they would like. I didn't really consider that aspect of it when answering this question but it's a really good point.
