Evaluating instructional design for online learning

Instructional Design for Online Learning CONFIRM and EVALUATE – Putting our designs to the test Evaluating instructional design for online learning

When it comes to online teaching and learning, we can use many of the normal methods and approaches for evaluating instructional design whilst also taking advantage of specific tools or techniques that online teaching and learning offer us.

Surveys, questionnaires, and exit tickets

Being able to gain student feedback and responses quickly, efficiently, and in a way that makes the results easy to use is one of the great advantages of online teaching and learning. We can send full surveys and questionnaires, auto-marking quizzes, exit tickets, and check-in/check-out questions with ease. Being able to make good use of all of these tools and onboarding students with the experience of using them is essential – it is worth taking the time to familiarise yourself and talk them through with your students.

Great examples of these kinds of tools include:

Student data

If you are making use of a platform like Google Classroom or Moodle or another LMS then you may have access to all kinds of useful data about student engagement. This can vary from basic information about student activity to very detailed data about engagement – all of which can help us better evaluate and develop instructional designs.

Take some time to find what data may be available through the platform you are using and decide how this can be useful to you. It can be tempting to become obsessed with this kind of data, but having a clear purpose as to what you will be using it for will help ensure you are using the information as efficiently as possible.

Recording and peer observation

When we are teaching in a classroom environment we don’t have an easy way of viewing our teaching from the perspective of students. We might try recording things, and this can be helpful, but it is often complicated and can usually cause the lesson to become more of a performance than a natural teaching experience. Being able to easily and unobtrusively record online teaching can give us a valuable way to look back over our teaching and review what worked well and where things might be improved.

Of course, it is important to always abide by any laws and regulations relating to privacy and video recording so you should take some time to inform yourself as to what rules you will have to follow before making any recordings.

Activity: Evaluating Your Instructional Design

Reflect on the tools and technologies you use in online teaching.

Produce a list of six ways in which particular tools and technologies may help enable reflection and evaluation of your instructional design.

Choose one of these ways and create a simple plan of how you will use this particular tool or approach to evaluate your instructional design.

This might involve making a survey, designing a feedback form, preparing a lesson observation, or any other method for evaluating your instructional design.

Instructional Design for Online Learning

Evaluating instructional design for online learning

Surveys, questionnaires, and exit tickets

Student data

Recording and peer observation

Activity: Evaluating Your Instructional Design

Further Reading