To Whom It May Concern,
This letter confirms the independent evaluation of the Thesys program by Dr.’s Kerry Rice and Jui- Long Hung of Boise State University’s Education Technology Department. For two years now, we have examined the data from the Thesys program with the goal to “identify key variables and examine potential relationships between teacher and course satisfaction, student behaviors, and student performance outcomes”. In the process, we have analyzed student data in detail including surveys of student satisfaction, learning logs stored in the Learning Management System, and grades reported by the registrar.
In our “Program Evaluation Report: Thesys 2012 Summer Session”, we have reached the following key conclusions:
- High student engagement correlates to high student performance in both 2011 and 2012. Students in 2012 had significantly higher performance than in 2011.
- The most important indicators of performance in both 2011 and 2012 are Time Spent per Week (or Session), Total Clicks per Week, and Number of Days Participated per Week.
- Course design in 2012 improved by providing and engaging students with more learning activities and helped students learn more effectively as students spent less time but engaged in more learning activities.
- Students were generally satisfied with the courses, believing that the goals were “Accomplished” (using iNACOL standards for Online Courses).
- No particular course had a lower satisfaction level.
JUI-LONG HUNG
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Technology
Boise State University
1910 University Dr.
MS 1747 Boise, ID 83725-1747
(208)426-5542