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Live from Blackboard World: Defining Quality Online Education with Learning Outcomes
July 15, 2009
By Margery Weinstein
Tracking learning outcomes, from course design to learner performance, is essential, said Brady Anderson, manager/IT learning systems, and Nick White, course quality assurance manager, for Capella University, in a presentation at Blackboard World in National Harbor, MD, today. Doing so will not only enable learners to perform better as a result of the coursework your organization creates; it also will enable you to make better recommendations to your company's managers on which courses to keep and which to nix.
Capella, which is fully online, and geared towards adult education, with 40 the average age of enrollees, currently is experiencing a 17 to 20 percent year-over-year growth in enrollment and revenue, Anderson and White said. It now has 28,100 learners participating in the virtual classes it offers. Despite this success, Anderson said the organization realized it "needed to close the cap on course design." Namely, the organization was searching for a way to track all the elements that went into course creation, including the criteria that led to the development of those elements, and the end result on learner performance. Capella was looking for a way to create such data, which then would be easily accessible by faculty and faculty chairs.
The result of this quest was the creation, over the last couple of years, of a system known as "Celeste." The system, which offers such features as pop-up reports for users, allows Anderson and his IT team to break out the specific elements of course design, and show how those specific elements impact learner results, thereby allowing White and his colleagues to make better decisions regarding which courses continue to meet Capella's standards and which need to be revamped.
Reports derived include those focused on assessment requirements, curricular requirements, and quality-check reports. The idea is making analysis of the information easier "by transforming that information into data," said Anderson, who explained that Celeste takes this data and houses and organizes it into a "massive [electronic] warehouse" enabling Capella to monitor courses "and take action accordingly."
Like any change initiative, Anderson and White said commitment from leadership during the implementation process, and for the long-term, is critical. To promote commitment, they suggest finding champions of the new outcomes tracking system; taking the time and committing organization tools to effectively train staff and staff managers on how to use it; widely publicizing benefits of the system such as via e-mail blasts promoting it; identifying and keeping in touch with project stakeholders; hosting presentations about it; and ensuring adequate organization resources have been devoted to the rollout.
To sustain commitment to optimizing the system, they said it was important to provide recognition of those those who aid its use and use it well; finding advocates interested in serving as ongoing cheerleaders of the technology; and for the organization to celebrate successes the new system made possible.
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