This microcredential is designed for educators and trainers in any sector. It will help you develop skills to evaluate and improve your online courses. You’ll learn how to create and use teaching evaluation strategies and build an ethical course evaluation framework. You'll also learn how to analyse your findings to improve your course design. Using best-practice techniques, you’ll identify what works and enhance your online teaching, ensuring your courses are effective and impactful.
Key features
- Design and use teaching evaluation strategies to improve your online teaching
- Learning is applicable to a variety of educational settings and sectors across the world
- Developed by leading online and distance education experts from The Open University
- Acquire skills you can apply to your practice straight away
What you will study
On this postgraduate microcredential, you’ll develop the skills you need to evaluate the success of your online teaching and enhance your students’ remote learning experience. Over 12 weeks, you’ll cover the following topics.
- The need for evaluation
- What evaluation might cover
- How to plan an evaluation
- How to choose an evaluation framework appropriate to your context
- How to select appropriate data collection techniques appropriate to your context
- How to analyse cause and effect relationships
- Conducting ethical and equitable evaluation
- The relationship between evaluation, benchmarking and quality assurance
- How to conduct a stakeholder analysis and include stakeholders in the evaluation process
- How to disseminate evaluation findings
You will learn
By the end of your learning, you’ll be able to:
- demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the reasons for evaluating teaching
- identify and evaluate a range of evaluation approaches and frameworks in terms of their appropriateness for specific online teaching settings and purposes, drawing on key theories
- design evaluation strategies that are appropriate to the evaluation focus and context for which they are intended and which meet the needs of diverse stakeholders
- demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the ethical considerations involved in educational evaluation and how they can be managed
- demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how evaluation findings can be disseminated to meet diverse stakeholders’ needs.
Skills you will gain
- Designing course evaluation strategies
- Using an evaluation framework
- Teaching online
- Online course evaluation design
- Technology-enhanced learning
- Learning design
- Evaluation findings analysis
- Stakeholder management
- Managing ethical considerations
- Teaching evaluation approaches
- Selecting data collection methods
Vocational relevance
As the world has adapted and become accustomed to accessing services online, technology-enhanced learning and online teaching skills are more in demand than ever. This course will benefit anyone working in or looking to work in universities, colleges and further education, adult education, and workplace learning and development settings. It will enhance the employability of teachers, trainers, lecturers, learning designers, education technologists and specialists, Heads of departments, and institution leaders and managers.
Created by leading experts and practitioners from The Open University
- Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman leads the OU’s Masters in Online Teaching programme. Her research explores the relationship between equity, social justice, online teaching and open pedagogies.
- Rebecca Ferguson is an Emeritus Professor at the OU focused on educational futures, learning analytics, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), innovating pedagogy and online social learning.
- Martin Weller is an Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology at the OU. His interests are digital scholarship, open education, Open Educational Resources and MOOCs.
Entry
This postgraduate-level microcredential will benefit educators from a variety of education settings and sectors. You will ideally have:
- a bachelor’s degree or an equivalent level qualification
- experience working in education or adult learning settings, though not necessarily in teaching online
- a strong interest in teaching and learning.
You do not have to be a practising teacher to take this microcredential. However, experience of working in education would be an advantage.
Please note
- If you don’t have a degree or equivalent level qualification, you may find the postgraduate level assessment challenging.
- The course material doesn’t assume learners are working. Past experiences will be just as relevant.
- All teaching is in English, and your English proficiency needs to be adequate for postgraduate study. As a guide, this corresponds to Level 7 of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). However, you won’t need to provide a formal English language score to enrol.
Course length
This 12-week course requires approximately 12.5 hours of self-paced learning per week, totalling around 150 hours for completion.
If you have a disability
The course is delivered online and makes use of a variety of online resources. If you use specialist hardware or software to assist you in using a computer or the internet, you can contact us about the support which can be given to meet your needs.
To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our disability support pages.
Study materials
What's included
All learning materials, exercises and activities are delivered entirely online.
While certain content can be downloaded, some content is exclusively accessible online, requiring a reliable internet connection for viewing. Please consider this if you are travelling.
Teaching and assessment
Assessment
You’ll take part in weekly tasks and discussions with co-learners to support and consolidate your learning. Towards the end of the course, you’ll submit a project or assessment demonstrating the skills you’ve acquired. This will be marked and graded by subject matter experts and make up 100% of your final mark.
Study support
- Learn 100% online on the OU’s learning platform with a mix of video, audio and written materials
- Engage in interactive learning through self-assessment questions, polls, tasks and reflection
- Share ideas and experiences in discussion with other learners, building skills, confidence and knowledge
- Receive support from mentors who guide discussions and answer questions
- Study at a time that suits you with the flexibility to access the course from your desktop, tablet or mobile device
What you will gain
15 UK credits at postgraduate level from The Open University*. Academic credits are awarded on passing the final assessment. These will be at postgraduate level 7 of the Framework for Higher Education (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) / level 11 of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework.
*Academic credit may be used towards selected OU qualifications. For more details, including eligible qualifications, visit Counting microcredentials towards OU qualifications. The credit awarded may also be used at another university, subject to the agreement of the receiving institution.