Recommendations for enhancing the quality of flexible online support for online teachers

Abstract

Flexible online support of teaching and learning at university is increasingly used in preference to face-to-face and blended formats to provide self-directed and just-in-time resources for teaching staff. Few have been evaluated to date. This paper outlines a pilot evaluation framework using the University of Newcastle's online resource, "Teaching in the Online Environment". The framework utilises web analytics (keyword search data) combined with data mining to evaluate this online staff development resource. In this paper we discuss the methodological challenges and benefits associated with our approach and make recommendations applying our findings to improve the Teaching in the Online Environment resource.