Phase 3: Short course delivery and continuous improvement
In the final phase of the short course process, the course is run and evaluated and then preparations begin for any subsequent offerings of the course. Specifically, there are three distinct actions that take place in this phase:
Run - You will deliver and facilitate the course with learners.
Evaluate - You will assess the course’s success against institutional and individually defined criteria.
Rerun - If there is to be a subsequent offering of the course, you will consider and plan for any changes that need to be made and determine if additional approvals or production support is required.
Expand the sections below for more detailed information about each of the Phase 3 actions.
Running your short course will involve a combination of managing users in the system and facilitating, communicating with and assessing learners. The specific ways in which you do this will vary depending on the course design and the way in which the course is intended to run. For interactive courses, for example, you should be prepared to read and respond to learner posts and provide feedback via the learning platform.
The OpenLearning Handbook provides a section on facilitating and assessing learners. Additionally, OpenLearning’s How do I facilitate a course properly offers some helpful tips for facilitation.
In Phase 1, you were encouraged to consider your evaluation plan for the course. In this plan, you should have considered how you would evaluate and ensure student learning, as well as the means by which you would evaluate the success of the program. Following the completion of the course, you will now want to analyse and reflect on any data collected. The following are some specific examples of questions you might try to answer with the data:
- What aspects of the course appeared to work well?
- What areas of the course could be improved?
- What were the areas of the course in which learners particularly struggled?
- How might you facilitate this course differently on next offer?
- What are the technical issues that might need to be sorted for future implementations?
- How might activities or assessment tasks need to be revised?
In preparation for subsequent offerings of the course, you will want to consider the results of your evaluation and your experience in facilitating the course. This reflection will inform the next run of the subject and may indicate if further design or curricular approvals need to be considered or if modifications need to be made to the course as it exists on the learning platform.
From here, you will re-enter the process from Phase 1 and work through the phases and steps again as required.
As a minimum, for a course that is to rerun, you should undertake the following actions:
- Update any dates in text
- Check links
- Outline any updates made to the course since last offering
