A Teaching Quality Enhancement Initiative Which Uses Evaluation Feedback to Enable Online and Blended Teaching to Provide Support to Students

The SEM model presented in Chap. 14 was tested with data from a ques-tionnaire with scales or factors for the four pedagogical elements necessary for the teacher to provide a supporting environment for online and blended learners: bite-sized videos of interest and relevance; learning materials which were well organ-ised and provided a clear learning roadmap; discussion forums which were set up and moderated so as to result in lively student–student and student–teacher inter-action; and; online teachers being approachable and responsive to communication with individual students through email, phone and online communication platforms. In addition there was a scale for the development of virtual learning communities, which is a factor in promoting retention and success. This chapter shows how the questionnaire can provide feedack to teachers to enable them to make their online and blended teaching more consistent with the model of good practice followed by the award-winning teachers. The design of a system for implementation of the evalua-tion scheme will be discussed, drawing upon extensive international experience. The validity, reliability and psychometric properties of the questionnaire will be estab-lished, as this is important for the credibility of the initiative. A service for collecting and presenting feedback to teachers will be described. Processes for counselling teachers about the meaning of the feedback and strategies for quality enhancement will be discussed, as these are essential if the feedback is to be acted upon.