Student Perceptions of Online Learning: An Analysis of Online Course Evaluations

Student evaluations of teaching provide a wealth of information about students’ experiences in higher education. Colleges and universities, though, as a whole, need to spend more time mining these evaluations to better understand student perceptions of their college coursework. These evaluations are especially helpful to better understand students’ experiences in online courses, which, despite continued growth, are still relatively new for most faculty and students. The analysis of seven years of student evaluations at a metropolitan research university is presented in the following article. The purpose of the analysis was to better discern students’ experiences online as well as to address commonly held assumptions about online learning (e.g., that teaching evaluations are lower for online courses). Results indicate that students in this sample actually do rate online courses lower than face-to-face courses. The article concludes with situating these results in the larger student evaluation literature as well as addressing larger implications of these results for practice

Effectiveness and Student Perceptions of High-Enrolment Health Studies Online Courses

Objective: In countries such as the USA, colleges and universities are focusing on how best to serve their students in tough fiscal times and a highly competitive marketplace. Boise State University has specifically focused on providing online courses as one option to meet student needs. However, more recently, Boise State began developing high-enrollment online courses to resolve bottlenecks in enrolments, while maintaining robust, interactive, and engaging learning experiences. Design: A mixed-method case study. Setting: Three high-enrollment health studies online courses offered at a 4-year university in Boise, Idaho, USA. Method: A systemic analysis of final course evaluations, student grades, and course reports from the Learning Management System were examined to investigate the effectiveness and student perceptions of high enrolment online courses. Results: Findings provide support that offering the high-enrollment courses met enrollment demand, provided quality instruction, and maintained student satisfaction. Conclusions: We present student perceptions of three high-enrolment health studies online courses. Lesson learned and suggestions for faculty members, instructional designers, and administrators are provided along the way

Moving Beyond Smile Sheets: A Case Study on the Evaluation and Iterative Improvement of an Online Faculty Development Program

Institutions of higher education are struggling to meet the growing demand for online courses and programs, partly because many faculty lack experience teaching online. The eCampus Quality Instruction Program (eQIP) is an online faculty development program developed to train faculty to design and teach fully online courses. The purpose of this article is to describe the eQIP (one institution’s multipronged approach to online faculty development), with a specific focus on how the overall success of the program is evaluated using surveys, analytics, and social network analysis. Reflections and implications for improving practice are discussed

Association of HLA class I with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection

BACKGROUND: The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system is widely used as a strategy in the search for the etiology of infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders. During the Taiwan epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), many health care workers were infected. In an effort to establish a screening program for high risk personal, the distribution of HLA class I and II alleles in case and control groups was examined for the presence of an association to a genetic susceptibly or resistance to SARS coronavirus infection. METHODS: HLA-class I and II allele typing by PCR-SSOP was performed on 37 cases of probable SARS, 28 fever patients excluded later as probable SARS, and 101 non-infected health care workers who were exposed or possibly exposed to SARS coronavirus. An additional control set of 190 normal healthy unrelated Taiwanese was also used in the analysis. RESULTS: Woolf and Haldane Odds ratio (OR) and corrected P-value (Pc) obtained from two tails Fisher exact test were used to show susceptibility of HLA class I or class II alleles with coronavirus infection. At first, when analyzing infected SARS patients and high risk health care workers groups, HLA-B*4601 (OR = 2.08, P = 0.04, Pc = n.s.) and HLA-B*5401 (OR = 5.44, P = 0.02, Pc = n.s.) appeared as the most probable elements that may be favoring SARS coronavirus infection. After selecting only a "severe cases" patient group from the infected "probable SARS" patient group and comparing them with the high risk health care workers group, the severity of SARS was shown to be significantly associated with HLA-B*4601 (P = 0.0008 or Pc = 0.0279). CONCLUSIONS: Densely populated regions with genetically related southern Asian populations appear to be more affected by the spreading of SARS infection. Up until recently, no probable SARS patients were reported among Taiwan indigenous peoples who are genetically distinct from the Taiwanese general population, have no HLA-B* 4601 and have high frequency of HLA-B* 1301. While increase of HLA-B* 4601 allele frequency was observed in the "Probable SARS infected" patient group, a further significant increase of the allele was seen in the "Severe cases" patient group. These results appeared to indicate association of HLA-B* 4601 with the severity of SARS infection in Asian populations. Independent studies are needed to test these results

Review of the Development of Learning Analytics Applied in College-Level Institutes

This article focuses on the recent development of Learning Analytics using higher education institutional big-data. It addresses current state of Learning Analytics, creates a shared understanding, and clarifies misconceptions about the field. This article also reviews prominent examples from peer institutions that are conducting analytics, identifies their data and methodological framework, and comments on market vendors and non-for-profit initiatives. Finally, it suggests an implementation agenda for potential institutions and their stakeholders by drafting necessary preparations and creating iterative implementation flows

Hidden works in a project of closing digital inequalities: a qualitative inquiry in a remote school

This study investigated students’ experiences and teachers' hidden works when initiating an instructional technology project that aimed to reduce digital inequality in a remote aboriginal school in a developed Asian country. The chosen research site was a small school classified as “extremely remote” by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. I intended to understand teachers’ hidden works through qualitative case study and participant research when attempting to bridge the existing digital divide at the school. The proposed main research questions were: What hidden work did teachers need to accomplish when implementing a technology reform? How did students and teachers experience the changes after learning and living with the XO laptops? How and in what way could a bridging-digital-divide project like OLPC live and survive in remote schools? A qualitative case study design was used in this investigation. Data were collected between June 2011 and Jan. 2012 and included classroom video/audio-taping, photos taken by students and myself, interviews, field notes, artifacts, documents, logs, and journals. The findings indicated that remote school children had experienced barriers to access technology not only because of socioeconomic inequalities but also because of the ineffectiveness of policy tools that argued to close the divides. Deploying XO laptops in the school was an intelligent choice to bridge children’s digital inequalities; however, a complete support system was necessary for this to be truly effective. Otherwise, teachers needed to devote extra effort, the “hidden works,” in every dimension to cover the system’s insufficiency to make the project work. Students’ learning experiences were exciting during my fieldwork. Students showed engagement when learning with XOs and technical devices. The XOs became part of children’s lives in the schools and at home. Students also expressed progress in learning. However, due to conflicts in the school, the effectiveness was constrained and only a few teachers showed interest in teaching with the XOs. By reflecting and analyzing my fieldwork within the literature, I connected technology diffusion and social and cultural capital from a theoretical perspective into my discussion. Treating the “closing-divide” endeavor as a kind of technological diffusion, the change agents are the key actors that make the new technology accessible and acceptable. The required actions that the change agents are expected to accomplished are similar to the hidden works that I demonstrated during the field study. In terms of social capital, my field study was not only an attempt to teach with the XO laptops, but also revealed a process that connected possible social relationships to transmit social capital to remote school children. My study suggests a collaborative action to close the digital divide in the field is necessary. For further studies, teamed researchers and long-term investigations are encouraged to advocate for the mission of bridging the digital divide

Capturing Professional Growth of Online Instructors: Learning Analysts’ Reflections on Studying a Faculty Development Program

Institutions of higher education are struggling to meet the growing demand for online courses and programs, partly because many faculty lack online-teaching experience. This case study provides an overview of a continuing faculty development program for online instructors—the eQIP (eCampus Quality Instruction Program, one institution’s multipronged approach of online faculty development)—and how this faculty development program was evaluated using surveys, analytics, and social network analysis. The case sheds light on the particular challenges in conducting an evaluation study aimed at supporting continuing improvements of a faculty development program. Using data from various sources (such as activity logs stored in learning management systems [LMS, the network platform that enables learning activities in the online environment. Blackboard, Moodle, Desire2Learn, and Canvas are the top four leading service providers of LMSs], course assignments and surveys, and asynchronous discussion threads), the researchers identified recommendations for program improvement

香港語言教育政策及問題評析

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以科學探究精神開展通識教育：Schwab 在芝加哥大學的超越與實踐 Transforming General Education through Scientific Enquiry: The Curriculum Development and Implementation of Schwab at the University of Chicago

美國大學通識教育在二十世紀兩次大戰之間快速繁盛，戰後又迅速萎縮。本文回顧1940年代以降，Schwab（1909-1980）在芝加哥大學所推動的一系列融合科學家的探究（enquiry）精神，其將Hutchins等人高懸的通識教育理想具體開展實現為大學教學課程的歷程。儘管1960年代之後，學院（The College）面臨萎縮，讓通識教育的理念無以為繼，但是，芝加哥大學推動通識教育的經驗在其他學校的通識課程中成為參考的元素。而在學院中與學術同儕共同發展通識課程的慎思籌劃經驗，也鑄成了日後Schwab在課程理論的實踐論述。 Reforms of and reflections on general education in colleges of the United States thrived from the end of the First World War to the Second World War. This essay provides a detailed overview of the general education reform led by Joseph Jackson Schwab (1909-1980) from the 1940s to 1960s at the University of Chicago, where he transformed the ideals of Robert Maynard Hutchins et al. into a reality. Schwab devoted himself to expanding the place of science in the general education of undergraduate students and placed particular emphasis on biological sciences. Even though his practices were too hard to continue, his insightful legacy has become a critical point of reference when discussing the ultimate aims and practical methods of general education. Eventually, his latter theoretical “Practical” essays in curriculum studies were partly motivated and then came to mature due to his curriculum deliberation experience with his colleagues at Chicago

Resolving Bottlenecks: Converting Three High-Enrollment Nursing Courses to an Online Format

Background: Converting large undergraduate classes from the classroom to online has been an effective way to increase enrollments in high-demand courses in undergraduate education. However, challenges exist to maintaining students’ high-quality learning interaction and engagement in large online courses. This article presents a collaborative model between faculty in health sciences and instructional designers to redesign and redevelop three high-enrollment courses to online at Boise State University. Method: Health studies course faculty and eCampus instructional designers conducted this study to reflect the collaborative online course development process at Boise State. Results: The offering of high-enrollment nursing courses met enrollment demand and maintained student retention. Challenges related to instruction were addressed by using a careful course redesign process and continuous improvement. Conclusion: Implications of this educational innovation for health science educators, instructional designers, and lessons learned are provided