Date of Award
2004
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Fischler School of Education and Human Services
Advisor
Gloria Krupnick Wolfson
Committee Member
Patrick Chambers
Committee Member
Maryellen Maher
Keywords
assessment, benchmarks, course development, course structure, descriptive statistics, distance education, evaluation, evaluation methodology, faculty, faculty support, Georgia, Institute for Higher Education Policy, institutional support, Internet-based distance education, Middle Georgia Technical College, online courses, online learning program, open-ended questions, periodic reviews, program effectiveness, program evaluation, qualitative analysis, quality criteria, quantitative analysis, student support, students, surveys, teaching and learning, technical college, web based instruction
Abstract
This applied dissertation was designed to evaluate the Online Learning Program at Middle Georgia Technical College, a public technical college in Georgia. Despite the continued proliferation of Internet-based distance education courses at Middle Georgia Technical College, many questions continued to arise about the quality of the program. The Middle Georgia Technical College Online Learning Program had never been evaluated to determine its quality, and the purpose of this study was to accomplish an evaluation of the program.
Subjects in this study included faculty, administrators, and students who participated in the Online Learning Program. The author developed two surveys based on quality criteria established in the literature and based on a study conducted by researchers at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Responses to questions from one of these surveys were used to answer this study’s central research question, which was to what extent did the Middle Georgia Technical College Online Learning Program meet the benchmark criteria for quality in Internet-based distance education as established by the Institute for Higher Education Policy? This central research question was further divided into seven subquestions that are related to institutional support benchmarks, course development benchmarks, teaching and learning benchmarks, course structure benchmarks, student support benchmarks, faculty support benchmarks, and evaluation and assessment benchmarks. The low response rate to the other survey caused the results of that survey to be inconclusive.
The study employed the evaluation methodology. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed as a part of this evaluation. The quantitative aspect of this evaluation involved the use of descriptive statistics to describe results that emanated from responses to specific questions that were a part of the two surveys. The qualitative aspect of this evaluation involved the analysis of responses to open-ended questions that were a part of the two surveys.
The results of this study indicated that the Middle Georgia Technical College Online Learning Program met the benchmark criteria for quality Internet-based distance education in all seven categories. However, there was some variance in the level at which the program met some of the benchmarks. Therefore, it is recommended that the college engage in periodic reviews of all aspects of the Online Learning Program to ensure program effectiveness.