Quality Assurance

With any course, it is important to monitor quality. Whether you are in the classroom or online, you need to make sure that your lessons are effective. Because you don't have the in person feedback and the option to read body language, quality assurance for an online course becomes eve more crucial. There are many different ways to test the quality of the content, the site, and how the students are receiving the instruction.

You can follow a formal design, such as the Kirkpatrick Partners' four steps, or go with something like a survey. The Kirkpatrick model focuses on the initial reaction the learners have to the material first. If they have a negative take on the course, they are not as likely to learn well. After the initial reaction, the students' knowledge gained can be tested. They can then see if the information they have is something that they can use to make a change in their life. After the course is completed, it is beneficial to go back and see if the students have actually implemented a behavioral change that lasted. While there is a lot more effort in doing something like this, it is very effective and can be a great way to monitor the quality of any course.

Implementation of Content and Media

Implementing content and media can be a little bit tricky. Since this consists of everything the student is going to learn in the course, you need to make sure that it is very clear and that things flow together. There have been a couple of assignments through this graduate program I am going through, that were not very clear. It was difficult to understand exactly what I was supposed to do. In situations like this, it is very important to be able to contact other classmates and even the instructor to get clarification. Going forward, they would be able to use this feedback to make the content and/or media for that week better. Sometime with an online course, you have to test it out on a group of people before you can refine everything to run more smoothly.

Web 2.0 is important in online courses. Courses can become boring very easily if the course only consists of words and pictures. Students need to feel like they can interact with the content. If they can interact, they are more likely to learn or remember the information.