I just ran across an article from Lisa Neal that gives some insights on how formative evaluation can provide guidance to verify design decisions in order to enhance the effectiveness. “Formative Evaluation: A Practical Guide” provides an easy to follow step-by-step guidance on how evaluation can contribute to the design of an online course up from a very early stage. The article gives a good point to start from or to check if this kind of evaluation is a fit for you purpose.
“Effectively Evaluating Online Learning Programs” is another pretty comprehensive article that falls into this category. I especially like the bullet points and their emphasize on what to avoid and what an alternative approach could look like. For example “evaluation is a part of the bigger picture. avoid: evaluation as episode; evaluation as autopsy; alternative: integrate evaluation in into ongoing practice”. The latter one goes back to the point Lisa Neal makes in here before mentioned article.
Filed under: Evaluation, eLearning, Evaluation
