Week 15 and summary of weeks so far

Image: Snow Mountain by ritaoksa

It is great to see so many excellent plans and evaluation projects underway. We are in week 15 of the course which is scheduled along with weeks 14 & 16 for writing your reports. No worries if you are taking it a bit slower than the schedule. There are a few people with draft plans which just need submitting so I can mark them and it would be good to get these. If you have not already done so, please let me know when I can expect your plans for marking, and your draft results and reports if you are working a different timeline to the one you initially indicated on your plans. It gives me some idea of when the marking is coming in so I can plan the next few months. I am happy to grant extensions, but it is best not to lose your momentum if you can keep going steadily.

So far three of you, Rachel, Michelle and Debra have put up some draft results for feedback. Rachel has posted the findings from a student survey on her blog and this is a good example of how to lay out your findings. It is easy to read and has enough graphs to help the reader visualise what is going on. I have made some suggestions as comments: 1. comment one and 2. comment two on her blog and also in a Google doc, and no doubt Rachel will make them available to you all. I hope Google docs works this time. Sometimes Internet Explorer does block Google docs as it regards it as a pop-up, so check the opt of your browser for this if it wont open and click and you will be away. Another option is to use Scribd and a URL can also be generated on this web facility for posting to your blog.

Michelle has extricated some excellent information from her participants, and explained it on her blog post. The findings from an expert review and surveys are promising. Once the responses from the survey are collated into a Table of the number of responses for each rating on the Likert scale and % frequencies they will be good to go. There is an example of how to do this on the course wiki. (http://wikieducator.org/Evaluation_of_eLearning_for_Best_Practice#Weeks_twelve_and_thirteen:_Analysis_of_data_and_results)

Michelle has also discovered one of the dilemmas associated with using a five or four part Likert scale - uncertainty when people choose the neutral option. My initial feedback is on the blog and I will give detailed feedback once I get access as a collaborator.

Debra has posted a description about how the data collection process went and some of the good things as well as some of the challenges. For example, the ease of getting date exported from Moodle and the time factor for people participating in the evaluation. Debra said she found it difficult to get enough people to respond to the surveys, and Hervé also mentions this. I wonder if anyone else found this an issue. Although it is okay to have a small number of respondents in a project for this course, in a "real" organisational-wide evaluation the response rate could be critical. We have found that some motivational announcements from the CEO help stimulate people to respond. Happily Debra feels as if her sub-questions have been answered and she is promising some draft results in the near future.

Hervé mentions some of the tricky bits associated with Survey Monkey in his post, and is almost there with his findings. Kay has been carrying out her evaluation and has posted something about her data collection process. Krishan is close to posting his results and tells us about his progress on his blog. Pradeep has the final version of his plan on his blog.

Some people are seeking feedback on their plans. Joy has a plan for an effectiveness evaluation of a computing course and needs help with the questionnaire and interview questions. Elaine has come back into the course burning rubber and would love some feedback on her draft plan, thanks to helpful colleagues. Adrienne has a draft plan up and might be feeling a bit lonely so please give some feedback on her plan. And it is not too late to give feedback to Heather on her draft plan.

Sam also has a draft plan up on her blog waiting for feedback, and we need to catch her before she shoots off to her new job - read her news on her latest post. Minhaaj would love some feedback on his plan I am sure and is currently interviewing a group of students who engaged in a collaborative online project called the Flat Classroom Project. Catherine has submitted a final plan and is awaiting marking. And in case you were wondering where the others have gone - Craig, Iain, Liz and Debra RW are extending into semester two. Please let me know if you need to do this as well.