Evaluation results can provide great help in terms of continuously improving your online content. Those in your organization who are involved with developing and delivering online content should assess the results and jointly plan for ways to improve the next time. For example, during the evaluation you may learn that your online course was not interactive enough, which would lead you to build more interactivity into your next event.
Some key questions those involved in online learning in your organization could ask themselves in order to continuously improve quality are:
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What key findings did we learn from the evaluation and how can we use these to improve our online content for the next course?
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What were the overall strengths of our online training?
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What were the overall areas for improvement?
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How can we build on our strengths for the next course?
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What steps can we take to improve areas of weakness?
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What did we learn from this experience?
For example, the Getting Online Project offered an “Introduction to Online Learning” online course in 2008 and 2009. This course was first offered as a pilot session followed by three online training courses. Through evaluation activities in the pilot session, GO trainers learned many lessons. These lessons included: the need to clarify expectations about participation and timelines early on; the importance of not assuming anything about the level of technical skills of participants; and the need to present content using a relaxed, supportive, and unhurried manner.
Another example is Community Literacy of Ontario. CLO has offered more than 30 online training workshops to literacy practitioners on Saba Centra Symposium, an interactive, real-time online learning classroom. Each workshop session was evaluated by participants. Just a few of the lessons CLO learned were that participants enjoyed having more than one facilitator; that they liked solid content interspersed with interactive group activities; that participants preferred to take part in an online workshop of two hours in length; and that they liked the sessions to promptly start and finish at the stated times. Based on the evaluations, CLO adapted its online content as needed.
