Centre for Health Professions Education

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Browsing Centre for Health Professions Education by browse.metadata.advisor "Bosman, Jan Petrus"

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    Expert evaluation of an on-line course in clinical immunology
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014-12) Liebrich, Walter; Bosman, Jan Petrus; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Centre for Health Profession Education.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This assignment describes an evaluation by experts of an on-line course in Clinical Immunology offered to medical registrars and scientists as a supplement to a practical rotation. Because of a lack of agreement on what constitutes quality in e-learning and to avoid the customary focus on usability evaluation, an open-ended, interpretivist approach was used here which, while not entirely novel, was unusual in an e-learning environment. For this project it was decided to evaluate both content (subject matter) as well as instructional value using two groups of peers from various academic institutions, clinical immunology experts and e-learning experts. Feedback was obtained through participation in a focus group or in writing. Replies were much easier to obtain from the e-learning group. Five out of seven e-learning experts provided a response, versus three out of twenty subject matter experts. Eventually most of the feedback was obtained from colleagues from the home institution. Both groups made valuable, somewhat overlapping suggestions. Subject matter experts indicated that the course materials were of good quality and adequate on a postgraduate level. E-learning experts expressed concern about the ability of the course to facilitate learning and identified also some usability issues. Some of the findings may well apply to other settings. A number of five evaluators in each group appeared to give a good coverage within an open-ended approach. Expert peer review offered insights that neither student feedback nor self-reflection could. Rather than imposing evaluative criteria on the experts through the use of fixed checklists, the open-ended approach allowed them to cumulatively develop their own framework tailor-made for the course. The choice of subject matter plus e-learning experts may be helpful in similar situations of evaluating on-line courses where dual expertise is not readily available. The open-ended interpretivist approach can be used for formative evaluation only and may work well for courses that are still in development or where an amount of uncertainty about teaching effectiveness exists. Future efforts will likely focus on implementing the recommendations, identifying sustainable ways of quality review for the current course and similar open-ended evaluation of other courses.