Online Courses and Assessment

By Martha Scotford

I have been teaching my History of Graphic Design course online for four years (after eighteen years of the traditional slide-lecture-in-the-dark way). With the online course, I think my role has changed from teaching to facilitating learning. The course is semester-long, with an average of fifty students, about 20% real Distance Education (DE) students (beyond Raleigh). As the course is a humanities elective, I have students from across the university, departmental majors (required course) and students from the professional community. The course is supported by WebCT, and by many wonderful DELTA individuals. The website contains the following: syllabus, handbook, thirty-six lectures with many images, five quizzes, four writing assignments, study aids, a timeline, a map, and extra resources like website links, e-reserves, basic book list, video list, and a glossary.

During these four years, I have been able to respond to many of the students’ comments from the annual end-of-semester evaluation sheet, to which I have added questions. Unfortunately, the response rate has been low, which I believe is mostly due to the fact that the survey is online and easily ignored. My questions have targeted specific features of the course website (linked slide carousels, designer profiles, e-resources, etc.), such as their quality and how often they are used by students. In addition, I asked about effective use of the message board and the discussion group activity; and for open-ended comments on the quality of their online experience and how to improve it.

Based on the comments received, I have changed or added the following features:

Created PDF files of all the lectures so they are easily printed out.
Clarified how discussion groups should operate and posted discussion summaries.
Developed discussion questions to connect historical practices with contemporary ones to emphasize relevancy of course material.
Created collections of images related to each quiz for easier studying.
Changed the nature of the quizzes to make cheating more difficult.
Reduced the value of quizzes in student’s total grade to reduce cheating.
Created short audio files for variety within website information channels.
Created short videos for ‘tours’ of significant book design examples, so multi-paged works are not solely represented by a few pages.
Created a 60-minute video tour of selections from Special Collections at DH Hill Library to introduce a writing assignment that requires use of Special Collections materials.
Expanded the variety of videos about design and designers shown on campus (DE students receive videos by mail).
Developed optional extra credit writing assignments to raise low quiz grades.
Encouraged use of the message board to develop ‘community’ by having each student introduce him/herself at the semester start and by asking for comments on the videos as they are shown.

At the course start, I set out guidelines for ‘course success’ that include:

My observation that, counterintuitively, it seems to take more effort and discipline to ‘attend’ an asynchronous online course than to fill a seat three times a week. And, therefore, that students must ‘schedule’ this course like the others.
My suggestion that students take the time early in the semester to visit and understand the full resources of the website so help can be found quickly when needed.
My suggestion that regular and frequent visits to the course website are required to keep up with communications from me as well as course material.

However, in the end, for all the suggestions toward success and special features to create an effective and responsive learning environment and a friendly online community, some students just don’t like taking online classes.

Regarding my assessment of students, there are three components to their final grade: 40% from five quizzes, 50% from four writing assignments and 10% from discussion group participation. The quizzes are created with Respondus software and contain many images about which they are asked questions. The students have 12 hours of access during which they have 30 minutes to complete the quiz (it is timed but they are not cut off if they go over). The four writing assignments are 3-5 page papers, half requiring research and half based on their own observations and/or interpretations. For those papers requiring observation/interpretation, students choose an example from a group of ten appropriate examples. Some of the writing assignments are different for design/art majors and non-majors. For the assignments posted later to the website, submissions were online as were my comments for revision; otherwise papers are submitted as hard copy. The discussion sessions are posted to the message board as a summary; the task of summarizing is passed within the group of about eight students. Students are expected to participate in five of six discussions for full credit. I sometimes comment on but do not further evaluate the quality of the discussions. The balance of the three components was arrived at through some trial and error. Some students are better at writing than test taking; the range of students in and out of design/art makes the playing field of the course bumpy. Extra credit options address some weaknesses. As well, less overall value to quizzes reduces (the theory goes) the motivation to cheat. I lay down the Honor Code and my belief in their integrity early in the course; after that it is their choice. The short timeframe of the quiz makes it harder to reference notes and outside sources. The grades tend to follow a natural curve, which I take to mean they are not cheating (a lot) or they are very clever at it.

Issues of diversity are inherent in historical study. An early lecture discusses developments in history writing and responses to feminist history as well as critiques related to minority and non-western cultures. Where possible, based on available materials, the lectures supplement the limitations of the textbook by addressing the contributions of women and African-American designers and design practices in two non-western countries, Japan and China. In these countries, economic development has created modern design communities and mass media.