Common Practices for Evaluating Post-Secondary Online Instructors

This literature review explores current post-secondary practices for evaluating online instructors. As enrollment of students in online courses has steadily increased over the last few decades, instructor evaluation has lagged behind. Through a thematic analysis of existing literature, this review seeks to answer these questions: (1) How are online instructors evaluated?  (2) When and why are online instructors evaluated? (3) What are institutions evaluating? This review reveals that many unresolved problems still exist among online instructor evaluations. One of the more significant problems raised in the research is whether evaluation instruments used to evaluate traditional face-to-face instructors are appropriate to evaluate online instructors. Another significant finding of this review is that current practices of post-secondary institutions evaluate instructors based on course design. These and other findings indicate that evaluation of online instructors is a field that requires additional research.

Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration