Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Evaluation Feedback From Students

7 Students participated in the evaluation.

Overall the seven students were quite positive with the overall course and the way it was presented. Majority learners indicated that they were not well informed regarding the course before hand, in the interviews I asked what sort of information they preferred knowing:
· Knowing that there will be no text books, since all the units prior to these had a text book, they expected a text book for unit 2780-81
· Everything will be online,
· Internet connection would be an advantage. – Specially if working from Home
· People who does not have internet had no option but to attend classes to get access to materials

100 % from the sample agreed to use a combination of both online and text book. When asked why did they prefer text book, they said: since this unit has got a lot of theory – hence plenty to read, they prefer doing all the reading at home in their spare time rather being in class in front of the computer. Some preferred text books in order to make notes and highlight things etc for later reference.
It seems there were a few who were not clear about the Course Objectives as per the graph below, but majority were ok.








How to improve the course
71% - Provide better information before the Course
42% - Clarify the course objectives
0% - Reduce amount of content covered in the course.
57 % - Increase amount of content covered in the course.
0 % - Update content covered in the course.
14% - Improve the instructional methods.
0% - Make course activities more stimulating.
86% - Improve course organization.
0% - Make the course less difficult.
14% - Make the course more difficult.
0% - Slow down the pace of the course.
0% - Speed up the pace of the course.
14% - Improve the tests used in the course.

From the interview it was discovered that a lot of students wanted more work, they have completed 8 units before doing these unit and they were full on work where they had to work on Microsoft Office programs learning Word, Publisher, Excel, Access, and these keep them very busy doing exercises and experimenting with the programs. Whereas the unit 2780-81 is Theory based teaching the operation of a PC and how to manage and protect Data. They found the theory part to be easier and faster to complete – since they just had to do is a lot of reading and assessments.

They preferred printing out a lot of materials and taking it home for reading. Nearly all of them have a file in which they have compiled all the printed notes for future reference.
Generally for 90% of the sample this was the first time they had experience online learning, and they overall had a good experience and has learnt a lot.

Regards
Krishan

4 comments:

  1. Hi Krishan, really useful results which give you a clear idea of where to tweak the course. Well done!

    Do you have ideas about improving the course organisation?

    Adrienne

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  2. Krishan
    it must be heartening for you to have a group of students who want more work given to them! :) I wonder did you get any information about what they wanted to be more organised in the course? You have obtained some very clear cut responses to the questionnaire, and it is evident they really like the hard copy version of the textbook. In your final report it will be good to see the main results presented in a Table and the full list of % Frequency responses in the Appendix .

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  3. Hi Krishan,

    Goood to know the survey result. I think not all of the course is suitable to be put online. Like the course you evaluated - Unit 2780/81. The main content is text based and I am sure most of the students prefer to read the course material with a hard copy, instead of reading on computer.

    For those courses if certain amount of animation, stimulation or interactivity will greatly help students to learn, I think it's a good idea to put the course online. But for course like 2780/81 - almost totally text based reading material, shift the course online wont bring any benifit but inconvenience to students and more cost for printing :-(

    Joy

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  4. Hi Guys,

    Thanks for the comment, will keep that in mind. I will be working on my final report and submitting it shortly.

    Thanks
    Krishan

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