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City University Uses e-Learning Data to Drive Education Excellence
Added: (Wed Apr 20 2005)
Quality Assessment Innovation Project will help City University to collect, organise, analyse and assess data about student learning activities
London, April 2005 — WebCT, provider of higher education’s most flexible and widely used e-learning solutions, today announced the Quality Assessment Innovation Project, an initiative to help colleges and universities improve education by analysing the student performance data they collect in the WebCT Vista™ academic enterprise system.
In the first-ever programme of its kind, four participating institutions, including City University in London, will use WebCT Vista’s PowerSight Kit to extract data on student activities, compare it against student achievements, synthesise it with other campus data, and leverage it for quality assurance and programme improvement. The project goal is to foster innovation in education and to make it easy for institutions to measure their results - a timely goal considering a recent warning from The Quality Assurance Agency that universities in the UK must maintain teaching standards.
Under the Quality Assessment Innovation Project, City University, London will track students’ online behavior and navigation pathways to help the University continuously improve course design. “Quantitative learning data extracted from online learning programs provides a new opportunity for improving the quality and effectiveness of the education we deliver, as well as providing academic staff with a greater understanding of online learning pedagogies,” said Dr. Susannah Quinsee, head of e-learning and associate director of library services. “We’re eager to develop a greater insight into online learner behavior, and the WebCT Quality Assessment Innovation Project provides a unique opportunity to do this, while simultaneously sharing our experiences with other institutions.”
The first project participants are:
• City University, sponsor: Dr. Susannah Quinsee, head of e-learning and associate director of library services; • The University System of Georgia Board of Regents, sponsors: Dr. Catherine Finnegan, associate director of assessment and public information; and associate professor Dr. Libby V. Morris, graduate coordinator for doctoral programs in higher education at the Institute of Higher Education, The University of Georgia; • Santa Barbara (Calif.) City College, sponsor: Andreea Serban, Ph.D., associate vice president, information resources, director of institutional assessment, research and planning; and • Weber State University (Utah), sponsor: Dr. Kathleen Lukken, associate provost.
Data collected with The WebCT Vista PowerSight Kit will enable researchers in any institution to identify student patterns and trends, isolate activities that lead to positive outcomes, target areas that need improvement, and evaluate the impact of changes. Institutions can perform educational analytics on the course, programme, curriculum, institutional and system levels and use the findings for reporting, accreditation, programme planning, learning effectiveness research and quality reviews. The Kit is part of WebCT Vista and will soon be available as a module for the WebCT Campus Edition™ course management system.
The participating institutions’ experiences will provide a roadmap for other institutions to identify opportunities to harness their own student performance data for educational benefit. “The Quality Assessment Innovation Project represents a significant step in the evolution of e-learning in higher education,” said Carol Vallone, WebCT’s president and CEO. “Our goal is to provide colleges and universities with the quantitative data they’ve yearned for, as well as concrete examples of what educational analytics can accomplish in instruction, assessment and accreditation. Ultimately, we hope to foster and accelerate innovation across the global academic research community.”
About WebCT
WebCT is a trusted industry leader that has set international standards for e-learning systems in higher education around the globe. Headquartered in Lynnfield, Massachusetts with customers in over 70 countries worldwide, WebCT provides highly flexible e-learning solutions that empower institutions across the educational spectrum with the ability to achieve their unique e-learning objectives. Thousands of higher education institutes have standardised on WebCT in order to expand the traditional boundaries of teaching, streamline the cost of education and enhance the student learning experience. For more information, please visit www.webct.com.