Online teaching: evaluating and improving courses

This microcredential is designed for educators and trainers in any sector. It will help you develop skills to evaluate and improve your online courses. You’ll learn how to create and use teaching evaluation strategies and build an ethical course evaluation framework. You'll also learn how to analyse your findings to improve your course design. Using best-practice techniques, you’ll identify what works and enhance your online teaching, ensuring your courses are effective and impactful.

Key features

  • Design and use teaching evaluation strategies to improve your online teaching
  • Learning is applicable to a variety of educational settings and sectors across the world
  • Developed by leading online and distance education experts from The Open University
  • Acquire skills you can apply to your practice straight away

What is a microcredential?

Microcredentials are professional development short courses with academic credit designed to help you quickly build in-demand career skills and knowledge that you can immediately apply. Learn more about microcredentials.

Qualifications

HZVM882 is an optional module in our:

Module

Module code
HZVM882
Credits

Credits

  • Credits measure the student workload required for the successful completion of a module or qualification.
  • One credit represents about 10 hours of study over the duration of the course.
  • You are awarded credits after you have successfully completed a module.
  • For example, if you study a 60-credit module and successfully pass it, you will be awarded 60 credits.
15
Study level
Across the UK, there are two parallel frameworks for higher education qualifications, the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications in England, Northern Ireland and Wales (FHEQ) and the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF). These define a hierarchy of levels and describe the achievement expected at each level. The information provided shows how OU postgraduate modules correspond to these frameworks.
OU Postgraduate
SCQF 11
FHEQ 7
Study method
This microcredential is studied entirely online
Module cost
See Module registration
Entry requirements

Find out more about entry requirements.

What you will study

On this postgraduate microcredential, you’ll develop the skills you need to evaluate the success of your online teaching and enhance your students’ remote learning experience. Over 12 weeks, you’ll cover the following topics.

  • The need for evaluation
  • What evaluation might cover
  • How to plan an evaluation
  • How to choose an evaluation framework appropriate to your context
  • How to select appropriate data collection techniques appropriate to your context
  • How to analyse cause and effect relationships
  • Conducting ethical and equitable evaluation
  • The relationship between evaluation, benchmarking and quality assurance
  • How to conduct a stakeholder analysis and include stakeholders in the evaluation process
  • How to disseminate evaluation findings

You will learn

By the end of your learning, you’ll be able to:

  • demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the reasons for evaluating teaching
  • identify and evaluate a range of evaluation approaches and frameworks in terms of their appropriateness for specific online teaching settings and purposes, drawing on key theories
  • design evaluation strategies that are appropriate to the evaluation focus and context for which they are intended and which meet the needs of diverse stakeholders
  • demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the ethical considerations involved in educational evaluation and how they can be managed
  • demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how evaluation findings can be disseminated to meet diverse stakeholders’ needs.

Skills you will gain

  • Designing course evaluation strategies
  • Using an evaluation framework
  • Teaching online
  • Online course evaluation design
  • Technology-enhanced learning
  • Learning design
  • Evaluation findings analysis
  • Stakeholder management
  • Managing ethical considerations
  • Teaching evaluation approaches
  • Selecting data collection methods

Vocational relevance

As the world has adapted and become accustomed to accessing services online, technology-enhanced learning and online teaching skills are more in demand than ever. This course will benefit anyone working in or looking to work in universities, colleges and further education, adult education, and workplace learning and development settings. It will enhance the employability of teachers, trainers, lecturers, learning designers, education technologists and specialists, Heads of departments, and institution leaders and managers.

Created by leading experts and practitioners from The Open University

  • Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman leads the OU’s Masters in Online Teaching programme. Her research explores the relationship between equity, social justice, online teaching and open pedagogies.
  • Rebecca Ferguson is an Emeritus Professor at the OU focused on educational futures, learning analytics, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), innovating pedagogy and online social learning.
  • Martin Weller is an Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology at the OU. His interests are digital scholarship, open education, Open Educational Resources and MOOCs.

Teaching and assessment

Assessment

You’ll take part in weekly tasks and discussions with co-learners to support and consolidate your learning. Towards the end of the course, you’ll submit a project or assessment demonstrating the skills you’ve acquired. This will be marked and graded by subject matter experts and make up 100% of your final mark.

Study support

  • Learn 100% online on the OU’s learning platform with a mix of video, audio and written materials
  • Engage in interactive learning through self-assessment questions, polls, tasks and reflection
  • Share ideas and experiences in discussion with other learners, building skills, confidence and knowledge
  • Receive support from mentors who guide discussions and answer questions
  • Study at a time that suits you with the flexibility to access the course from your desktop, tablet or mobile device

What you will gain

15 UK credits at postgraduate level from The Open University*. Academic credits are awarded on passing the final assessment. These will be at postgraduate level 7 of the Framework for Higher Education (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) / level 11 of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework.

*Academic credit may be used towards selected OU qualifications. For more details, including eligible qualifications, visit Counting microcredentials towards OU qualifications. The credit awarded may also be used at another university, subject to the agreement of the receiving institution.

Course work includes

End-of-module assessment

Future availability

Online teaching: evaluating and improving courses typically starts twice a year – in March and October. This page describes the microcredential that will begin in March 2025.

Regulations

As a student of The Open University, you should be aware of the content of the academic regulations which are available on our Student Policies and Regulations website.

Entry requirements

This postgraduate-level microcredential will benefit educators from a variety of education settings and sectors. You will ideally have:

  • a bachelor’s degree or an equivalent level qualification
  • experience working in education or adult learning settings, though not necessarily in teaching online
  • a strong interest in teaching and learning.

You do not have to be a practising teacher to take this microcredential. However, experience of working in education would be an advantage.

Please note

  • If you don’t have a degree or equivalent level qualification, you may find the postgraduate level assessment challenging.
  • The course material doesn’t assume learners are working. Past experiences will be just as relevant.
  • All teaching is in English, and your English proficiency needs to be adequate for postgraduate study. As a guide, this corresponds to Level 7 of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). However, you won’t need to provide a formal English language score to enrol.

Course length

This 12-week course requires approximately 12.5 hours of self-paced learning per week, totalling around 150 hours for completion.

Register

Start End England fee Register
10 Mar 2025 Jun 2025 £675.00

Registration closes 09/03/25 (places subject to availability)

Register
This module is expected to start for the last time in October 2032.

Future availability

Online teaching: evaluating and improving courses typically starts twice a year – in March and October. This page describes the microcredential that will begin in March 2025.

Additional costs

Study costs

There may be extra costs on top of the tuition fee, such as set books, a computer and internet access.

Ways to pay for this module

We know there’s a lot to think about when choosing to study, not least how much it’s going to cost and how you can pay.

That’s why we keep our fees as low as possible and offer a range of flexible payment and funding options, including a postgraduate loan, if you study this module as part of an eligible qualification. To find out more, see Fees and funding.

Please note, postgraduate and OUSBA loans are not available as payment methods for microcredentials.

Microcredentials

Most people pay for their microcredential with a credit or debit card. You may also consider approaching your employer to cover the cost.

Study materials

What's included

All learning materials, exercises and activities are delivered entirely online.

While certain content can be downloaded, some content is exclusively accessible online, requiring a reliable internet connection for viewing. Please consider this if you are travelling.

Computing requirements

  • Primary device – A desktop or laptop computer. It’s possible to access some materials on a mobile phone, tablet or Chromebook; however, they may not be suitable as your primary device.
  • Our OU Study app operates on supported versions of Android and iOS.
  • Operating systems – Windows 10 or 11 or macOS Ventura (or higher).
  • Internet access – Broadband or mobile connection.

If you have a disability

The course is delivered online and makes use of a variety of online resources. If you use specialist hardware or software to assist you in using a computer or the internet, you can contact us about the support which can be given to meet your needs.

To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our disability support pages.

Request your prospectus

Our prospectuses help you choose your course, understand what it's like to be an OU student and register for study.

Request prospectus