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Title:
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ASSURING AND ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF BLENDED LEARNING COURSES REFLECTIONS OF COURSE DIRECTORS |
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Author(s):
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Lúcia Pombo, António Moreira |
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ISBN:
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978-972-8939-38-0 |
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Editors:
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Miguel Baptista Nunes and Pedro Isaías |
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Year:
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2011 |
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Edition:
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Volume I |
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Keywords:
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Quality assurance, quality enhancement, evaluation, bLearning courses, Higher Education. |
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Type:
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Full Paper |
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First Page:
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133 |
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Last Page:
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140 |
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Language:
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English |
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Cover:
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Full Contents:
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click to dowload 
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Paper Abstract:
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This paper reports on an empirical study exploring the way in which blended learning (bLearning) courses in Portuguese higher education institutions (HEIs) apply their internal quality assurance (QA) and how the evaluation of the courses should be made in order to enhance their quality, according to the opinion of course directors. A survey was conducted with 19 bLearning course directors in 11 Portuguese HEIs and two sets of data were collected and analyzed: how the evaluation of bLearning courses has been made and how they think it should be made in order to enhance their quality. Questions like who evaluates, how to evaluate, what is evaluated and what to evaluate for and also what should be implemented in order to improve course quality were put to the course directors under scrutiny. Results revealed that students, teachers and directors are the main performers of modules evaluation, although institutional and external agents themselves are seen as very relevant. The main instruments used for evaluation are the course final reports and the students final questionnaires. The discussion forums should also be included as important instruments to evaluate online modules. As to the objects of evaluation that are being selected in Portuguese institutions all directors mentioned the communication tools used, the quality of didactic materials and the pertinence of the learning tasks proposed, all of them also seen as most pertinent for the purposes of evaluation. The main goals of evaluation are the improvement of the curricular plans and the adequacy of the teaching strategies. The study highlights the need for HEIs to reassess their approach to the QA of bLearning courses, and brings some contributions to those who are in charged of bLearning courses, providing a useful framework that covers all aspects of quality assurance in order to enhance teaching and learning quality. |
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