Researching Online Education

Kerstin Hamann, Philip Pollock, Bruce Wilson, and Ph.D. student Gary Smith recently published an article titled “Online Teaching and Assessment” in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics. In the article, the authors explore what the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning reveals about the effectiveness of online education in Political Science. They find that while the number of college students enrolling in online courses is rapidly increasing, we still know relatively little about the effectiveness of online teaching tools. Paying special attention to the importance placed on assessment in Political Science and higher education more broadly, the authors point to the role that online courses can play in departmental and program assessment, while also discussing some of the pitfalls in using online courses for assessment purposes.