Throughout this unit, I was able to utilize a rubric my group designed to analyze two courses. After spending so much time with my group members creating it, I wanted to use it and verify its efficacy. We were given several sample courses to look at. We also had the choice of choosing any other that we knew of or had worked with. The sample courses that were provided were a little difficult to analyze because there was only the syllabi and the institutions web sites from which we could make an assessment. I chose to review one of those courses, iA- Washington State's online high school, and the Prince William County Schools' (PWCS') Virtual high School Astronomy course.
iA is a free, statewide, online high school. In addition, student from around the world can take classes here but they must pay tuition. Students can take any number of classes to earn their high school diploma, supplement their current curriculum, or retrieve credits from previously failed courses. Here is a link to the analysis of that course.
PWCS' Virtual School is offered to students of PWCS as part of the PWCS system. Students must pay tuition to take these classes. The courses can be taken in lieu of onsite classes, to supplement a student's current course schedule, or retrieve credits. The Astronomy online course was much easier to assess because I was able to login to the LMS and look at the whole course. It was helpful that I could find all the necessary factors to analyze. Here is a link to my analysis of that course.
I also found "flaws" in the rubric our group created. I noticed that the wording for many categories was not as clear as I thought they'd be while actually using it. While looking at these classes, I recognize that it would have been more helpful to have more categories- 5 instead of 3. By just having 3, I found that it was a big jump from "average" to "excellent." In addition, we didn't have any parental dimensions included which are vital to K-12 success. I realized that our rubric was geared to higher ed courses but I was evaluating K-12 projects.
After completing this exercise, I believe I am able to successfully find quality in a course. By using a rubric that has all of the quality dimensions and the elements to those dimensions, I know what to look for.