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E-learning: Needs Assessment Strategies
To properly approach an e-Learning opportunity, an educator needs to discover a great deal of information about their students. The educator needs to know what prior knowledge the learners are bringing to the subject. The educator should know demographic information about their prospective students such as age, education and physical capabilities. Specifically for e-Learning, knowing the students technical competency and access to technology is also good practice.
But how do educators find out this information? One of the best tactics is to develop and implement a needs assessment.
Defining a Needs Assessment
A needs assessment is a tool to evaluate and inventory the instructional requirements of an educational offering. The primary goal of a needs assessment is to find the gap between what the learners already knows before taking the e-Learning offering, and what they need to know to master the content. Some say that a needs assessment is much like doing market research, and it can be performed using many of the same tactics. A needs assessment tool can take many forms including questionnaires, surveys, direct and indirect observation and interviews.
Data Collection Procedures
A needs assessment can be as rigid or flexible as you want. Depending on how scientific the sampling is to be, educators will have to determine how meticulously they perform their data collection. In most cases, a convenience sampling process can be used in which learners are selected to participate in data collection based on their availability. Convenience sampling tends to be the quickest and most inexpensive method. Depending on how rigid the educator needs to be, this data collection method should provide the most expedient results.
Questionnaires and Surveys
Since students for e-Learning educational offerings are convenience learners, questionnaires and surveys can be good methods for soliciting their advice. These intake instruments can be mailed or processed using an online surveying tool. Using rating or ranking questions can provide some of the better data sources for evaluation, but it also a good idea to provide a few open-ended questions.
Direct or Indirect Observation
With educational outcomes that require physical activity, observation of learners in an actual physical setting may be required to collect the appropriate data. Through direct observation, the evaluator can watch a typical learner as they perform a task and then evaluate the learner on their performance. The data from this observation can be coded for analysis.
Through indirect observation, the evaluator actually judges the outcome of an activity the learner has engaged in. Examples could have been compiling a report or working on a physical object. The evaluator then reviews the outcome and collects data on the finished project.
Interviews
Interviews can be structured or unstructured and can include groups or individuals. Initially, it's best to work from a structured set of questions. The biggest benefit of a face-to-face interview is the ability of the facilitator to take the direct feedback and then to improvise on-the-spot questions to collect more meaningful data.
The needs assessment is an essential tool for developing any educational offering. For any e-Learning effort, data collected during a needs assessment provides foundational information for success.
Article Source: MxGet Article Directory
Author's Bio
Susan Bond is a part of IQ-ity.com - provider of a top-rated Learning Management System for schools seeking to teach courses online. IQity's LMS includes an online study guide for the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). Ohio teachers can add a product review of OGT practice tools and help other teachers.
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