Evaluation of Online Courses

Spring 2010

Prior to the evaluation:

  • Contact the evaluee to arrange a meeting time for your orientation to your “tour” of the course.
  • Arrange with the instructor for your time of access for your private observation of the course. The evaluee must provide you with their “fake student” login ID and password, which will enable you to access the class.

Questions to ask during the orientation/tour with the instructor:

  • How many students participated in the most recent significant assignment (an exam, important paper or quiz)? This equates to the question on the classroom evaluation form about how many students were in class on the day of the evaluation. Your evaluee will need to check the grade-book in Blackboard to count the number of students.
  • What do I need to know about your class?
  • Are there any significant instructional elements that occur outside of Blackboard, and can you share those with me?
  • If you communicate with students outside of Blackboard (via email, for example), do you want to share any of that communication with me?
  • Is there a particular week or module that would best represent how the class functions?
  • Are there any extra access codes I will need to observe your entire course? (For example: Mastering Astronomy, or Wiley Plus, or Connect)

Conducting the evaluation:

  • Explore the course during your set time, and fill out the official district form, available on the COOL Committee website. (
  • The evaluee will make the course unavailable to you once the observation time is completed (unless you mutually agree otherwise).
  • After receiving the results of the student evaluations, prepare a summary of those, and include the resulting information in the evaluation form.
  • Meet with the evaluee to discuss the evaluation and sign the evaluation form.
  • Submit the evaluation form and your pay sheet (flat rate of $225) to the Dean.

Student Evaluations:

  • As a part of the evaluation, online students are asked to complete a survey similar to the one distributed to students in on-campus classes. This survey will be administered through Class-WEB.
  • The Blackboard administrator, Minta Winsor, will place the following Blackboard announcement into courses being evaluated:

“Students, please click the link below to fill out the Student Response to Instruction survey. This short survey is an opportunity to rate your experience in this class and to give important feedback that can be used to make any necessary improvements to the class in the future. Your responses will be anonymous and confidential, and they will be collected by a faculty member other than your instructor who will serve as the official evaluator of the class. The link below brings you to the CLASS-Web home page, where you will have to sign on with your CLASS-Web User ID and PIN. Once you do so, Click ‘Student Surveys’ to begin. Please complete the survey by midnight on May 2nd. “

  • This announcement will appear in most courses from April 18th – May 2nd, above the regular announcement(s) for those weeks. Remind your evaluee that it’s important to have these announcements be at the top or second position on the announcements page.
  • Evaluators will be able to access the results of student survey on CLASS-Web. Under the Menu for Faculty and Staff, there is a link: "Distance Ed Student Survey Results." Clicking this link will take you to a page displaying a drop-down list of the course CRNs to which you have been assigned as an evaluator. Once you select the appropriate course and click the Submit button, you will see the summary of the survey results.
  • The summary of the students’ responses to the survey is to be added to your evaluation of the course.

Required Time:

  • For an evaluation of an online class, you will be paid $225, which is based on five hours of work.
  • Three hours can be spent on the observation, including the orientation/tour with the evaluee and your private observation of the course. You and your evaluee should discuss and agree upon how you want to divide this time.
  • One hour should be spent writing the actual evaluation.
  • One hour should be spent meeting with the evaluee to discuss the evaluation.

Feedback:

As this is still a relatively new process, please provide your feedback on how we can improve the evaluation of online classes. Just send an email to Ramona Silver at or Charlotte Lofft at