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| Summutive Evaluation | We can’t say that the educational materials are well prepared if the students themselves haven’t probed them, i.e. haven’t started learn from them. Only when they try, they can make a conclusion whether they are of good quality or not.
It is all too easy to consider the 'product' of course development in distance education to be the materials that are delivered to students by one means or another, whereas it is really the interaction of learners with those materials and other resources, possibly including tutors and fellow students. Summative evaluation procedures are intended to provide information about a course or materials in use.
Tutors Feedback
Tutors are most commonly the people who provide not only teaching support to their students but also the ones who give students educational materials. In these circumstances there exists a direct channel for students' reactions and comments to be made known to the course writer(s) and for any problems with the instructional arrangements to be discovered. Students can apply straightly o the teachers who gave them the part of course and discuss everything with him. But in some cases the tutors may not prepare and check the material they are giving to the students. Where such tutors support a course by marking assignments, running tutorial sessions(face-to-face or by means of telecommunications), etc. mechanisms can be implemented to collect, on a systematic basis, evaluative comments from them on a range of issues, e.g. their reactions to the teaching materials, accounts of problems their students have encountered in their studies and assignments, etc. (Ryan, 1982). The experience of tutors in making the course work can provide particularly useful information for subsequent modifications to or adaptations of the teaching materials and instructional arrangements.
Feedback from Students
Feedback from students may be good sources of information for those students who seek some prove to their course choice, and students who already work with the course material. Actually some of student comments can be implemented into the course materials, for example by providing a supplement to update information or to clarify a problem area. More frequently, the student feedback from one presentation of a course helps to determine revisions for subsequent presentations. After particular course the material stays the same, but feedback from students can be considered by the commission and be changed quite soon. While preparing further course materials the editors may change them according to the student’s requests.
With the help of different kinds of reviews and polls it’s possible to get to know the students opinion about a particular course. Feedback may be sought on each unit of instruction or part of a course. Questionnaires are probably most widely used for collecting feedback from students and can include several different types of question. At the first stage of it the can be just asked about advantages and drawbacks of particular course, and what concrete problems they had met during it. More deep evaluation of course questions can be found at the end of the questionnaire, using multiply choice responses system.
Questions can be related with such spheres of interest:
• Extent of Utilization. In such kind of education its important to know forward what is going too be studied and what particular sense has concrete learned material. Students can be asked what they think about particular study course, which components they have used, how much time was spent for the learning, studies, on getting prepared. They may also be asked to report on any problems they have encountered in obtaining the course materials or in gaining access to resources.
When evaluating the answers to these questions, it must be remembered that students' response can be quite different because of the different level of preparation and learning skills. They all may have different reasons for choosing the particular study course, have varying amounts of relevant prior knowledge and experience in the area of study and be undertaking their studies in a variety of financial, geographical, domestic and, possibly, occupational circumstances.
According to this, the student’s references should not be accepted or performed without previous check and correction.
For example, a student may report having spent considerably less than the notional amount of study time on a particular unit of instruction, due to a high level of existing knowledge about that aspect of the course. The other students can report the contrary data due his mental skills or time consuming preparatory searches. Because of great personal interest in the topics and a willingness to explore them at great length some other students can spend more or less time for the same topic. So the results are quite subjective.
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