Course and Program Evaluation Criteria
How are you evaluated?
Most students are oriented towards their grade. Most students at UNC want good grades too! To help you earn good grades, the faculty has established very specific criteria that you must reach. We show you those criteria too! Every class has a number of objectives, and each objective is written to communicate what it is you must DO OR KNOW to receive full credit.
You aren’t just evaluated on the course level though.
We want to know if the total experience in our program adds up to mastery. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Are you able to integrate what you learn? Can you apply theory to new situations? To fine these things out, you are evaluated through a comprehensive exam and portfolio review. For example, in your portfolio you might want to show an electronic lesson that you’ve created. Does that lesson employ learning theory (learned in ET 502 and PSY 682) and message design (ET 604)? Does its construction follow good development practices (ET 524)?
We take evaluation very seriously in this program.
As you learn more about our discipline, you’ll see that evaluation is what we are all about. We evaluate before we design (we assess the need, audience, and context), we evaluate what we develop (called usability testing), we evaluate our implementation, and we evaluate what our learners know. Everything in this program spins around evaluation. When you leave this program, you’ll have the same perspective, if not so already.
As such, we set our program up to be based upon the continuous feedback we receive.
We look at student comprehensive exams (are they really getting it? – if not, back to the course design). We look at portfolios (can students communicate what we are about at the most essential level? – if not, we need to help them understand better what we are about). After student leaves the program, we keep in touch with them and ask them, what did we do right? What could we do better? We invite specialists in from other top notch instructional technology programs and get their feedback too. Are our doctoral students publishing and presenting at conferences? Do we need to build in ways to help students achieve? All of these questions are continually going through our heads and implemented in program revisions.
We also look at faculty core beliefs about what is critically important for students to know and do.
We supplement those with professional organization standards. These items are then aligned to our course offerings. All of this links back to our program mission statement!
The following links show you details information and specific evaluation criteria for the entire program.
You can see exactly what courses are required of you by consulting each syllabus and examining its objectives. When you complete this degree, your knowledge should map back to these comprehensive charts. Be prepared for our interest in your learning, as we will ask you how well WE are doing in meeting the goals stated on these charts.
See How you are Evaluated in the MA School Library Endorsement Program
See How you are Evaluated in the MA Educational Technology Program
See How You are Evaluated in the Educational Technology Ph.D. Program