What do teachers want to know about their students eLearning? A study of 70 evaluation plans

The e3Learning (enrich, extend, evaluate learning; e3L) project in Hong Kong has conducted 70 evaluations of web-assisted courses with teachers in three Hong Kong universities. In this paper the evaluation intentions of teachers are examined. What do teachers wish to learn when they evaluate their teaching? In each e3L sub-project a formal evaluation plan is produced with a range of evaluation questions. Our 70 evaluation plans contained 457 separate evaluation questions. These questions were examined in order to portray the range of Hong Kong university teachers’ evaluation intentions and to see whether these changed during the 21⁄2 years of the project. During the project there was a good balance of interest in looking across the learning environment, learning processes and learning outcomes, with increasing discrimination being shown in articulating what is meant by ‘learning outcomes’. In addition, teachers became more interested in conducting needs analyses and in having formative as well as summative evaluations.