Roxanne Russell’s presentation today set an incredible tone of our Brown Bag talks this year.

After providing an overview of the new online Doctor of Ministry program in the Candler School of Theology, she offered the group a framework for program evaluation that emphasized the importance of meeting student expectations for their experience of the program. She suggested five key areas of student experience that have an impact on student perceptions of program value:

1. Faculty Interaction
2. Peers
3. Curriculum
4. Content
5. Manageability

For each of these five areas, Roxanne identified course design features and corresponding measurable student behaviors. By tracking student behaviors within their online course environment, and correlating those behaviors with perception data collected through surveys, Roxanne suggested that the framework not only provides a process for continual improvement in course design and delivery, but also has potential applications for the early identification of at risk students. Her evaluation framework is currently being implemented, and she looks forward to sharing the results insights from her analysis in the coming year.

Our next Brown Bag talk will be delivered by Tracy McGill (Chemistry) on Wednesday October 8. Tracy will discuss her experience using ALEKS in undergraduate chemistry education, and the ways in which both extracted and embedded analytics from the tool complement an approach that is strongly influenced by the scholarship of teaching and learning. Drew Kohlhorst and Stephanie Parisi will round out the fall with talks about their use of data to inform decisions about the GLUE Program and Coursera MOOC initiative, respectively. More information about each of these talks, as well as updates about other projects, initiatives, and opportunities, will be made available here in the coming weeks.