A New Methodology For Evaluation: The Pedagogical Rating of Online Courses
The author believes that it is important that we develop a common and objective scale to evaluate courses and to have a common measure in order to measure the effectiveness of the online course and other course offerings. In order to do this he proposes a summative rating process. This process has five different parts.
These five different parts or factors are content, learning, delivery support, usability, and technological. When looking at content this is the basis for the course and if it is not good to begin with then the entire course will not be a success. When looking at the content the pedagogical styles and tools to be used must be assessed. Learning factors will affect the quality of the design. Delivery support factors address the way courses are presented and now the availability of the content to students with vision and/or hearing impairments. How well are teachers, administrators, and students able to assess the information? Usability factors are dealing with the quality of the content and what tools are being used. Technological factors such as was with available bandwidth, system configurations, server capacity and what software to be used are important.
Sonwalkar believes that the use of the tools that are addressed in this article could help create and move online educational systems into having a must more measurable success rate.
Sonwalkar, Nishikant (2001, December 21). A new methodology for evaluation: The pedagogical rating of online courses. Campus Technlogy, Retrieved November 22, 2008, from http://campustechnology.com/articles