After reviewing your student evaluations what do you think went well in this class?

1. All the students took the online quizzes and scored well.

2. Managed a variety of student engagement levels.

3. Organization and instant feedback to students.

4. Students felt engaged in the course due to interactions on the discussion board. This was an excellent way to involve students in a 100% online distance education course. It also served as a weekly reminder of assignment due dates and a way for the instructor to stay in touch with the class.

5. The course itself was productive and detailed.

6. The class was identical in design and execution of 03D, thus the same parameters of limits (functional and complete).

7. I think the students enjoyed the online flexibility of the course.

8. I believe the class was certainly sufficiently rigorous to compare with f2f classes.

9. The course seems to be a hit with the great majority of students. The tutoring services we provide seem to be a positive for some students. Tutoring seems helpful to students who reside off-campus.

10. Given the high mean scores, I believe the overall approach for teaching this course was effective. I especially think that a graduate course in research design can be intimidating. Therefore, it was critical to alleviate anxiety and stress the excitement of research and inquiry.

11. What I have done to give students the help they need is reasonably complete. The subject matter is available in text, PowerPoint’s presentation and in some cases audio and the students appear to enjoy that

12. Since the response rate was so low, I am not sure I can do much about describing what went well and what did not. This semester was the first time that my counterpart and I exchanged students with she taking the qualitative methods and myself helping the quantitative students

13. The course was well received by students.

14. I am happy that my students found me to be easily accessible, fair, and encouraging. Since we did not meet face to face, I had to be extra careful to give students encouragement via email and Courseden. This was especially important when I asked for assignment revisions. I believe a student should understand why a grade is given and have the chance to correct certain assignments. Nearly every student to whom I offered revisions accepted the offer; most earned full credit on their revisions. I also posted practice quizzes throughout the semester so students could review course material in a low-pressure environment.

15. The positives were that students felt like it was easy to get in touch with me and they liked that they could access class information from anywhere.

16. Students like that the material was easy to access when it was convenient for them. They felt the material was applicable to their professions.

What was problematic? What needs to be improved?

1. Students did not do well on the tests. Need to improve student's knowledge of the scope of the course. The less engaged students need different prodding to pique more interest.

2. Links to other online resources.

3. More student to student interactions.

4. Using a program like turnitin.com would enable the instructor to handle the volume of papers in an efficient manner and check for possible plagiarism. The similarity index would help instructors check this effectively.

5. Response time in Wimba detracts from the discussions.

6. Student participation in near zero for these on line surveys.

7. Student hardware, and student understanding of software and network issues with various external vendors and how their own pc machines work.

8. The course design in general is always revisited. I think Joomla was a good platform for us to use, but I also think it is time to move forward.

9. I need to improve the `chat` option in the course.

10. Getting students to read some of the directions to assignments as they come through the back door without reading what is posted. I need to determine a better way to understand the research question assignment.

11. I am not sure the students fully understand the exchange. Determining how the one verbal comment about effectiveness fell through the crack

12. Length of time to return graded assignments was too long. Also, too many assignments provided.

13. Students missed face-to-face interaction. I am not sure how to provide access through online that feels like the same as a face-to-face meeting. This is something I will need to explore.

What do you plan to change next time you teach the course?

1. Provide students with a Study Guide for each test.

2. Refine research project.

3. Include distance learning `training` modules for students

4. Require students to attend survey session, and conduct while testing for finals.

5. I have changed the type of projects that we work on, but not the nature of the online portion of the course.

6. Fewer assignments - weeding out some of the possible `busy work` to get at the most important learning outcomes and opportunities.

7. Based on the majority of students input, try to keep doing what I am already doing. I anticipate natural progression and update of course material. I am planning of adding a component to build knowledge based that student’s help build.

8. I will design a more encouraging system for chat engagement.

9. More audio and step by step presentations of assignments

10. More audio and step by step presentations of assignments

11. Make sure that even one student does not feel neglected

12. I am planning to change the research journal posts to research assignments, which uses a different course module. This change will streamline the process for students, since they're already familiar with the Assignments tool. It will also make it easier for me to provide feedback on the assignments, which form the basis of the students' final project, an annotated bibliography.

13. Preparing more videos.

14. Preparing better materials

15. Fewer assignments - weeding out some of the possible `busy work` to get at the most important learning outcomes and opportunities.

16. I plan to incorporate more assignments that challenge students to use different types of technology.

What was the largest adjustment you made in teaching a distance course and how was this addressed?

1. Students had to be physically present for each test. Some students had work schedules that conflicted with the test dates. This was addressed by scheduling make-up tests.

2. Time management, responsiveness.

3. Addressing students needs and issues.

4. Lack of `in the moment` student contact as `learning opportunities`.

5. Preparing additional topics for discussion in case the primary topics do not generate significant discussions.

6. Realizing I would not meet most of the students in person, and the impact this might have on their learning. This is why I made a greater effort to keep students informed via email. There should never be a reason for students to say `You never told us that.` I don't want to be a teacher who expects students to read my mind and work miracles. I'm here to help them succeed. All of us must use the tools available to give this outcome the best chance of success. Online courses have many challenges, particularly the lack of human contact. To compensate for this loss, I greatly increased my email communication with students and left extensive feedback on the research assignments.

7. Accepting the issue that students expect 24/7 faculty access while using a range of semi-compatible means of class data access.

8. Lowering my expectations of quality student interaction, as minimal attitude is frequently associated with undergrad online courses.

9. The same as before, except the nature of this course requires very few videos and very little interaction.

10. Nothing...

11. Amount of work in the course was too great - as noted above, I will address this by trying to find a better balance between the comparable face-to-face class and the online course.

12. Packaging the course for asynchronous delivery. I normally spend the entire unpaid summer creating the course and its content. The development of extensive & high quality online offerings will grow with appropriate incentive.

13. I am very comfortable and most effective with face to face interaction. The use of the computer as the major means for communication was difficult at first but I grew accustomed to it.

14. Since I do this class in a self-paced manner, the adjustment of grading different assignments and responding to different chapter material questions all at the same time.

15. Giving good feedback which I used textual responses and I believe that in the future could be done in other ways.

16. Grading on-line submissions in a timely way.

17. Amount of work in the course was too great. I will address this by trying to find a better balance between the comparable face-to-face class and the online course.

18. Have done this before - face to face sessions useful when students request these.

19. Typing a lot of lecture notes, questions and solutions.

20. I've been teaching only online courses for many years and continue to try and improve student engagement.

After reviewing student evaluation questions what do you think of the level of non-academic support provided for this course by student services the library the distance education center and the instructor?

1. I think the level of non-academic support is adequate.

2. The level of support seems to be okay for these students.

3. We need Turn-it-in, especially for online where students tend to turn to the web for `answers` rather than thinking things through.

4. Great tech support from the distance learning help desk.

5. Little feedback was provided by students for these components.

6. I think all support staff and centers do an excellent job for students at UWG!

7. The level of non-academic support was quite good. I received no complaint about this.

8. Student input into exit survey needs to be enhanced at the system level, possible grade release dependent on completion/submission.

9. Still configuration issues with Internet Explorer while running some Course Den product. ITS tells students to ditch IE for firefox, but firefox is not supported by ITS?

10. I think it is fine.

11. Students do not seem to be very aware of the services provided by the libary to support distance students. I will need to make sure to provide information for students in the future on how to access these services.

12. There is excellent support; however we all have to do a better job of publicizing that these resources are out there, and we have to get them to utilize these resources early and often!

13. Our local non-academic support is fantastic! I am glad to see a serious consideration to move away from WebCt/BlackBoard technologies (Desire2Learn is a much better product). I think it will be a mistake to continue the centralization of the LMS operations. Furthermore, I think it is a mistake to dictate that a campus must not use more than one LMS. Such a policy is over-reaching and will stifle creativity and discovery of alternative systems and methods to better serve the students in accordance to the diverse missions of the various USG institutions.

14. The level of support from the distance education center was excellent and proved to be very effective. As the instructor, I maintained constant email contact with the student to keep them informed of important announcements and to offer assistance when they had problems.

15. They seemed to have either good experiences or no experience.

16. The student evaluations recognize Distance Learning's support: the question `The Distance Learning helpline was helpful to me` earned a median response of 4/5 from the nine people who answered. I encouraged students to visit me during my Reference desk hours and communicating frequently through email and CourseDen mail. This course is a small step on the way to our students' final goal of graduation.

17. Students felt very supported by the instructor.