- provide remediation or reinforcement that led to success in other courses or programs

- saves time that could be applied to other Assessment is critical in a distance learning program because we are generally involved in assessing more factors in more ways. In general, we are interested in the following issues:

The most useful assessments of distance learning courses operate at multiple levels:

• strategic (can you prove that the course or program did advance the institutional mission in the way you anticipated?)

- reach a new pool of students

- aid retention

tasks

• financial (did the program accomplish its financial objectives)

- achieve expected learning goals within budget

- leverage current technology assets

- make the expected amount of money

- save the expected amount of money

• educational

-

Each of these evaluations can focus on the "summative" (how well did the whole course or program meet the assessment criteria) or the "formative" (what were our successes and failures within the course? what approaches work best and why?)

Each of these evaluations can focus on the "quantitative" (test scores, retention rates for the course content, retention rate for students) or the "qualitative" (student satisfaction level)