The rise in popularity of distance education courses has not produced a concomitant rise in appropriate forms of evaluation of such courses. In particular, the student voice is rarely heard with the result that feedback about the success or otherwise of such courses is severely limited. The paper addresses this problem by reporting on current research, the Template Project, and the way in which it is possible to draw parallels between the evaluation needs and techniques of service industries and distance education courses. It is argued that the resulting tool for evaluating distance education courses allows for the students' perceptions of their programmes to be identified and made use of when evaluating such courses.

Evaluating distance education courses: the student perception

Evaluation is becoming increasingly important, both as a part of the design of online courses and as a mechanism for quality assurance. In this paper, the issues facing the evaluation of online teaching and learning are considered. Different motivations for evaluation are identified, and strategies for addressing these needs are illustrated.

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Evaluating online teaching and learning

Purpose – Teachers have access to a growing range of online tools to support course delivery, but which ones are valued by students? Expectations and satisfaction are important constructs in the delivery of a service product, and how these constructs operate in a service environment, such as education where the student can also take on the role of the customer is unknown. This study focuses on the student perspective of online tools. The aim of this paper is to measure students' expectations and perceived importance of, and satisfaction with, a range of tools available in a virtual learning environment.Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative survey (n=396) was conducted and descriptive measures and statistical analysis were produced.Findings – Results show that the tools that enable instructors to communicate with students and vice versa are more important to students and more satisfying to them than tools that enable students to interact with each other. Also, business students appear to be differen...

Teacher communication preferred over peer interaction: Student satisfaction with different tools in a virtual learning environment

An important development in the UK public sector is the rating and classification of service providers. The authors examine a significant exercise of this kind: the ‘star’ ratings awarded to local authority social services departments in England. The article explains why it is difficult to accept the Government’s claim that these star ratings provide a significant advance in public accountability.

Advancing Public Accountability? The Social Services ‘Star’ Ratings

This article provides results from a study of the hidden processes of consensus formation that precede and make possible official judgments and decisions of the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (SI). The research question for the study was: How is knowledge negotiated on the back stage of school inspection and presented on the front stage? The article builds on in-depth case studies of school inspection in four schools. Data include internal and official material from SI, on-site observations of inspection in schools and internal quality assurance meetings at SI, and interviews with inspectors. The analysis is inspired by Goffman's usage of the concepts “front stage” and “back stage.” The results suggest that the SI front stage borrows legitimacy from an evidence-based model aiming at objective and “equivalent” judgments, while the back stage displays a complex mix of rigorous formalized guidance and uncertainty that requires inspectors’ brokering and deliberation.

The Front and Back Stages of Swedish School Inspection: Opening the Black Box of Judgment

This article reports on initial findings of the Template Project, a project researching ways of evaluating post-graduate courses offered through the medium of distance education. It has taken an evaluation tool from industry and re-designed it so that it can apply to distance education courses. The question as to whether or not a tool initially located in the service industries is appropriate for education is examined as are the alternative paradigms of evaluation. A Popperian approach to evaluation is offered as the paradigm within which the Template Project's approach to evaluation should be located.

The Evaluation of Course Quality Through a Service Template

Since their inception in 1993 OFSTED inspections have generated considerable controversy amongst teachers and educationists generally, Much of the criticism to date has centred on the effects which such inspections have had on schools and their staffs. In contrast little sustained concern has been shown about the underlying assumptions of the OFSTED inspection process. This article identifies as the central feature of that process a particular but tacit conception of judgement. This conception is examined from an essentially Wittgensteinian perspective and is shown to rely on an imprecise understanding of the nature of criteria. It is argued that the OFSTED approach implicitly represents what are in fact conventional criteria, having no guarantee of broad agreement, as if they were criteria having such agreement. As a result severe doubts are raised about the validity of the judgements made and hence of the inspection process generally.

OFSTED, Criteria and the Nature of Social Understanding: A Wittgensteinian Critique of the Practice of Educational Judgement

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The Evaluation of Course Quality Through a Service Template

OFSTED, Criteria and the Nature of Social Understanding: A Wittgensteinian Critique of the Practice of Educational Judgement