What are the main concerns in course evaluation?
The evaluation of any distance education course should seek information that can be used in developing future courses—that is, it should be formative.
The materials for a course are usually subjected to peer review to ensure the quality of the content and then developmentally tested by a sample of learners to ensure that they are comprehensible and user friendly. In developmental testing students work with the materials before they are published, providing comments and reactions through questionnaires, interviews, or focus groups.
After the course is produced, evaluation by students and tutors will help support further development. Mechanisms are needed for systematically developing evaluative comments on a range of issues—for example, tutors' reactions to the teaching materials, accounts of problems their students encountered, and remedies they applied. Students may be invited to comment on the quality of the course components through interviews or questionnaires.
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