HOW'S MY E-LEARNING?

HOW'S MY E-LEARNING?

A reader's organization currently offers synchronous and asynchronous e-learning. His questions? "What sort of formal processes/steps should my department follow/take to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of its e-learning offerings?

Do others who have gone through the same process have advice to share as to how to go about doing something like this?" Here are responses:

Linda Fitzgerald's (linda.fitzgerald@cheetahlearning.com) company recently underwent a review by the American Council on Education (ACE) in Washington, D.C. "The ACE review is a way a company can have the effectiveness of its courses evaluated by an outside authority," she says. "It was a time-consuming process (the whole process took months), but at the end of the day, our e-learning and classroom courses all were sanctioned by ACE for college credit.

The four-person ACE committee that audited each and every course had a few minor recommendations to further increase the value of our courses, but overall, they gave the seal of approval." For more information about ACE, visit www.acenet.edu. Fitzgerald is president of Cheetah Exam Prep in Hartford, Conn. DON'T WAIT!Don't wait until instructional materials are complete to analyze quality, says Patti Shank (patti@learningpeaks.com).

"Rather, develop a checklist/rubric to be used during design and development to ensure that quality is built into design and development."

Good Web sites where one can find examples of quality indicators and metrics to potentially adopt include the following:
ASTD E-learning Certification Standards
Quality On the Line
The Institute of IT Training's Standards
Principles of Good Practice for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs
Open eQuality Learning Standards
Guidelines for the Design of Educational Software

Shank's two cents?
Don't ignore higher-education metrics, where one can find "lots of good ideas for making online training more effective." Shank also recommends that the reader's team work together to "jointly build a checklist and determine how to use it during and after the design and development process." The reader "may also want to add project-management metrics.

Effectiveness metrics should center on whether learners met the learning objectives (learning assessments) and whether learning transferred to where it gets used (performance metrics)." Shank is with Learning Peaks LLC, an instructional design and instructional technology consultancy in Denver, Colo.

Source: learning VNU