How to Evaluate Online Courses: A Comprehensive Approach

One of the prominent questions in eLearning remains “How to effectively evaluate an online course?” This question makes perfect sense as it is quite important to assess the course performance and come up with a strategy for further improvements. 

Online course evaluations seem rather difficult, yet you can conduct an effective one if you know how. Throughout this guide, we will explore everything regarding online course evaluations, from their importance to practical tips and ways of evaluating your courses. Specifically for this guide, we also interviewed an industry expert, Jan Keck, who provided insightful tips on the course evaluation process. So, if you are ready, let’s start! 

Why evaluation is crucial for online courses 

Evaluating online courses is important for several reasons. First of all, it will help to determine the overall degree to which students meet the course's learning objectives. Thus, as an instructor, you will better understand the course’s performance. 

Also, evaluating your course will allow you to assess the course and identify its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, you can identify content areas that need improvement, assessments that do not work well, or other technical issues. 

Let’s not forget that evaluations will also help you boost student satisfaction and retention rates. With online course evaluations, you can reduce dropout rates and work on areas of the course that will help you further enhance your engagement levels. 

Overall, online course evaluation is crucial to maintaining credibility and meeting the high standards of current customers. 

What to measure in online course evaluation

To efficiently evaluate your courses, it is vital to understand what to measure first. 

Track course completion rates 

Course completion is a very useful metric for you as a course creator. It is an essential number that showcases the number of students who actually completed the course successfully. This rate indicates a few main factors: 

• first, that the course was engaging and digestible, and 
• second, that students found it valuable to continuously dedicate time to the end. 

If the course completion rate is low, it clearly shows that learners are not engaged with the course and are most likely struggling with many parts of the content or delivery style. 

Track assignment scores 

Make sure to also assess assignment scores, as this is a metric that will help you evaluate the efficiency of the course when it comes to student learning. It will help you identify how well students digested the provided material and what areas they are having difficulties in. 

Assignment scores should be tracked across different types of assignments, from tests and quizzes to surveys and questionnaires. 

Measure student progress 

Keep an eye on student progress through the course, especially if it is self-paced. To track student progress use metrics such as grades, assignment completion rates, class participation rate, and course completion rates. For instance, by tracking metrics such as class participation and grades you can see how students improve over time understanding the effectiveness of your learning program. These metrics will help you evaluate the effectiveness of the course in terms of workload. 

Monitor student interaction and engagement levels 

Remember the importance of monitoring students' interaction and engagement levels. Engaged learners are a clear indicator of a well-rounded course. However, if the engagement and interaction levels are low, then some work definitely needs to be done. 

To measure student engagement and interaction levels, you can check how many students have completed assignments, tests, or games within the course. Also, measure how many students engaged in discussions and forums. 

Keep an eye on student retention rates 

Finally, keep an eye on retention rates. If the same student returns for another course, that means your course succeeded in delivering and exceeding students’ expectations. However, if your retention rates are low, it indicates that you need some in-depth evaluation and identification of areas for improvement. 

As far as we are clear on what you need to measure, it is time to jump into the best practices and, soon enough, best tools to efficiently evaluate each of these metrics. 

Proven best practices for course evaluation

When it comes to course evaluations, make sure to incorporate best industry practices for efficient evaluation. These practices range from self-evaluation and reflection to building relationships with the learners. 

Self-evaluation and reflection 

"Giving myself feedback is more valuable often than the feedback from participants."

 Jan Keck

Facilitator, trainer, learning experience designer

Jan Keck places immense importance on self-evaluation and reflection when it comes to efficiently evaluating your online courses. According to Jan, after each session, you must reflect on it to identify key areas for improvement. Everything from reflection on personal energy levels and group engagement is vital to gaining valuable insights into the effectiveness of the course. 

You can find and fill out the self-evaluation template we created by the end of this article.

Record-keeping and review process 

"I use notion as the tool where I often plan my session and then record the feedback. So it's all organized in different databases and pages, so I can always go back and look at it. Oh, the last time I ran the session was on this date with this group. And here's the feedback. "

 Jan Keck

Facilitator, trainer, learning experience designer

To efficiently evaluate your course, you need accurate data. Thus, record-keeping becomes an essential part of your toolkit as a course creator. Jan actually recommends a useful tool for record-keeping - Notion. It is a great software that has a free plan for individuals to keep track of different aspects of business or personal life. 

Overall, detailed record-keeping will help to organize reflections and feedback in one place, allowing you to access and review it with ease whenever necessary. This means that any insights gathered from students will not be lost even if a great deal of time passes by. So, as a creator, you can access the feedback and insights at any time when reflecting on the course for further improvements. 

It is worth mentioning that you can use Notion for course content development and student progress tracking. When it comes to student progress tracking maintain student profiles, assessment records, and feedback, documenting agendas, attendance, and class interactions. Gathering and keeping records of all this data will help you gain comprehensive insights and a base for further improvement. 

Interactive improvement 

"I review my notes before I make changes to my slides or content to make sure that I actually improve every single time." 

 Jan Keck

Facilitator, trainer, learning experience designer

Interactive improvement actually refers to the process of engaging students in course evaluation and improvement. For instance, you can conduct interactive surveys to enable students to interact more deeply with the evaluation process, providing detailed opinions on the course. 

Other methods and ways to engage students in helping you evaluate the course include conducting live feedback sessions.

 These can be dedicated sessions after the course competition, where a group of students can discuss their experiences and suggestions in real-time. Such a form of interaction will provide you with great insights into what needs to be improved and help you build stronger relationships with the students. 

Finally, you can organize virtual focus groups and dive into the specifics of the course with them, discussing all the pros and cons of the course. 

Understanding and addressing pain points 

"Talk to your customers, talk to your students, figure out what their pain points are... because that exactly will be what's selling the course." 

 Jan Keck

Facilitator, trainer, learning experience designer

Every business needs to make profits to continue growth and operations. Well, that will be impossible if the businesses do not continuously deliver value by addressing customers' pain points. The same strategy goes for course creators. Your course is a product that a customer purchases to gain value and solve a specific problem (e.g., lack of expertise in X area). Thus, knowing and understanding your customers' pain points is a crucial factor that affects sales. 

In order to understand customers' pain points better, you can: 

• Conduct in-depth interviews and engage in one-on-one conversations with students. 
• Analyze performance data identifying areas in which students display a pattern of facing difficulties. 
• Research the market and analyze various case studies examining the current market trends and what your target audience is looking for. 
• Conduct targeted surveys to gather real-time feedback from existing and potential clients. 

All of these strategies will help you understand your customer's needs and pain points on a deeper level. By gathering data regarding your audience, you will be able to improve the course in the best possible way. 

Building relationships with learners 

"If you want to make your course or your cohorts the best possible, like that's the fastest way to get there is using your own feedback, plus the feedback from the students and then making changes for the next time you run it." 

 Jan Keck

Facilitator, trainer, learning experience designer

We have already discussed the importance of student feedback but did not discuss an important strategy you can use while gathering it - building strong relationships with the learners. Whether you decide to gather the feedback via forums, focus groups, or interviews, you can always personalize this process. 

Example 

But, it is important to remember that the relationships must be established from the get-go. For instance, if someone provides a valuable course yet had nothing to build and manage 

relationships with students, guess what would happen? The students who are disciplined enough will complete the course and move on, while students who need extra motivation will not even complete the course, let alone provide actionable feedback. 

On the other hand, if you realize the importance of building and maintaining strong relationships with the learners, it all will be different.  

• You create a welcoming environment and personalized welcome emails for each of the students who enrolled in the course. 
• You are accessible and approachable, dedicating time to answer students' questions and concerns. 
• You often address your students by name

Such an approach can help you build strong relationships with students, contributing to more course engagement. Completion rates on her course will definitely be higher, and students will be encouraged to provide Katie with valuable insights and feedback. 

Analyzing market demand 

Jan recommends engaging with the potential students early on - "talk to your customers, talk to your students." This will help you to understand what customers actually want. You can do this by utilizing tools such as online forums and groups where you can engage with the potential audience via discussions. He also makes a point about using your audience’s language when trying to sell a course, e.g., describe their challenges and how the course provides solutions to these. 

To analyze market demand further, it is important to test ideas with a smaller group. Jan Keck learned this the hard way after his course did not sell. So, he recommends testing any idea with a smaller group early on. For instance, if you are evaluating a course that is not out there yet, start by testing it with a smaller audience section, gather feedback, and make improvements before the Big Launch. 

Also, when it comes to market analysis, do not forget about the importance of monitoring competitors and their courses. It will allow you to understand the market landscape better and thus position your course more efficiently. 

Tools to enhance your evaluation process

As far as we are clear on the best industry practices for online course evaluation, it is time to jump into the practical section of the article and explore a few quantitative and qualitative tools that will enhance the course evaluation process. 

Quantitative tools 

Let’s start with quantitative tools that will help you enhance the course evaluation process. 

Headcount 

First, you can track the number of students who enrolled, completed, and dropped out of the course. Essentially, keep student headcount for these three vital areas. By keeping an eye on these numbers, you will be able to collect data and interpret it regarding course appeal, the course’s ability to retain students and completion success. 

Testing 

Use tests and questionaries to measure students' knowledge. First of all, these will allow you to gain a quantified number of students within the course who are engaged enough to complete assignments, tests, and homework. Also, based on the results of the tests, you can further evaluate the overall effectiveness of the course. 

For instance, if 35 students out of 40 scored 70% out of 100 on course A, there is a clear problematic area within the course. However, if 35 students scored 90-100% and only five scored 70% or lower, this might be related to individual learning capabilities. 

Data analysis 

When discussing quantifiable tools, let's not forget about data analytics. We recommend using learning management systems with built-in analytics. These software solutions will provide you with actionable insights and comprehensive analysis regarding student and course performance. 

Comparison 

Finally, do not forget to conduct comparisons. When you gather all the necessary data, compare your course’s performance with that of your competitors and the overall industry benchmarks for similar courses. 

Qualitative tools 

Quantitive tools are vital to gaining quantifiable and measurable insights into the course process, but qualitative tools are just as important. So, let’s take a look at a few helpful qualitative tools that will enhance course evaluation, helping you gain deeper insights into course performance. 

Surveys 

To gain more quality insight into your audience and ways to improve the course, you can conduct surveys. Surveys help to gain detailed feedback from participants regarding their experience with the course. To create a survey, you can use tools such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey. 

Observation

Make sure to observe students throughout the course. Observation will help you understand student behavior and identify patterns that can be analyzed and evaluated later on. 

Case studies 

Conduct case studies and explore how students interact with your course overall, as well as how they use their knowledge later on. For instance, some of your students may have gotten an internship, job, or a promotion. Monitoring successful cases, keeping in touch with the students, and sharing about these also will help you gain more authority in the market. But besides the market authority, it will help you evaluate the effectiveness and value of your course for the students. 

Focus groups 

Focus groups are critical if you want to have a detailed discussion regarding your course and its impact. You can reach out to the students who completed the course and organize an hour or two-long discussion regarding tier experience. The best way to do this is to host a LIVE discussion. 

Interviews  

Finally, if you have time, you can invest it into conducting individual interviews with a segment of your students. Especially the ones who did not complete the course or left negative feedback. These students are key to your improvement and further success. They will provide you with insights on what is lacking and opportunities to improve. 

Your checklist for evaluating online courses

Let’s summarize this guide into an actionable checklist for evaluating online courses. 

• Assess the course via self-evaluation and reflection. 
• Understand how well the course met its initial goals and objectives. 
• Track participant engagement, monitoring headcount and completion rates. 
• Collect feedback via surveys to gather opinions on the course regarding content and delivery. 
• Analyze the results of quizzes and tests completed by the students to identify areas students struggle with most and improve the delivery of these sections. 
• Observe student's interactions with one another and with you throughout the course via live sessions, forums, and other means of communication to identify areas that need clarification. 
• Conduct focus group discussions to gain a specific understanding of the course performance. 
• Review the gathered data and implement changes necessary to improve the course. 

You can download our Course Evaluation Template to assess and evaluate your sessions. The first section is for your own self-evaluation, where you can reflect on every session or course you host. It also includes a template for your students’ feedback.

Final thoughts on improving learning with evaluation

Improving student learning requires your full attention as it is one of the key steps that will contribute to higher satisfaction rates, leading to high student retention and better word-of-mouth marketing. To continuously improve student learning, make sure to assess and evaluate the courses regularly via the tools and practices outlined in this guide. 

To further improve your students’ learning experience, you can incorporate powerful learning management systems into the process. For instance, Uteach is a robust solution for course creators that aims to provide the best learning experiences for students. 

The platform comes in handy with a variety of useful tools ranging from course and website builders to marketing and sales automation. Also, Uteach offers robust analytics by which you can measure students’ success and overall performance of your courses, gaining useful insights for further improvement. 

You can schedule a free demo or take advantage of a free 14-day trial run to find out how Uteach can foster your eLearning business’s growth.