Revisiting formative evaluation: dynamic monitoring for the improvement of learning activity design and delivery

Distance education courses have a tradition of a formative evaluation cycle that takes place before a course is formally delivered. This paper discusses opportunities for improving online and blended learning by collecting formative data during course presentation. With a goal of overall improvement in instructional effectiveness and identification of promising practices for inclusion in a learning activities design library, we propose the immediate and on-going monitoring of the effectiveness of learning activities, tutor facilitation and learner satisfaction during the course presentation. This has implications for constructively involving the learners and facilitators in the course improvement process. While originally conceived to reduce the time for pilot evaluation of new courses and learning activities, the proposed system could also be extended to individualized and blended learning environments, and if implemented using semantic web technologies, for research into the effectiveness of learning activity patterns.