Evaluating distance education courses: the student perception

Abstract

The rise in popularity of distance education courses has not produced a concomitant rise in appropriate forms of evaluation of such courses. In particular, the student voice is rarely heard with the result that feedback about the success or otherwise of such courses is severely limited. The paper addresses this problem by reporting on current research, the Template Project, and the way in which it is possible to draw parallels between the evaluation needs and techniques of service industries and distance education courses. It is argued that the resulting tool for evaluating distance education courses allows for the students' perceptions of their programmes to be identified and made use of when evaluating such courses.