English courses for level 6 from LanguageCenter (SQU) tutorials content and assessmenteffectiveness

Atsloom Zaabanoot(2009(

Overview:

Sultan Qaboos University consist of many Collages , Social sciencecollages and Scientific collages . Most of the Scientific collages use theEnglish language in their teaching , Therefore , all first year students inthe Scientific Collages like Collage of Science and Engineering areassessed in their level of English and then they are distributed intodifferent levels or sections according to their level of English . In other words , according to the students rustles in the exam they are grouped indifferent groups each with peers with same level of English . TheLanguage Center (LC) in the SQU is responsible for the learning of English courses in the SQU. The student are arranged in 6 levels fromlevel one to level six . They are taught face to face in all the levels andthey are provided with online course for self learning and they are alsoasked to take some quizzes . This evaluation paper aims to evaluateEnglish Courses for science for level 6 which are online tutorialsintending to the student to give him opportunity to practice his Englishskills outside the classroom . The learners view the course using the SQUsite and they are enrolled in the course by their teachers and given personal passwords in order to sing in the course . The course includetutorials in listening , reading , writing and speaking skills . Moreover, thecourse contain exercises , quizzes and tests for assessing the studentsmastery of the learning activates . All the kinds of assessments taken andsubmitting online.

The study purpose:

This study aims to evaluate effectiveness of the Tutorial and assessmentcomponent ( content and exercises ) in the English for Science for Level6 online course .

The problem statement :

How effective , organized and useful are the English for Science for Level 6 online course content are ?

Participants:

10 first year students from level 6 who take the level 6 courses fromLanguage Center in the SQU .

Instrument:

Study tools:-Questioner -Interview As stated previously this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Tutorial and assessment component of the English for Science for level6 students online course from Language. A questioner from 11 items wasdistributed to the participants to evaluate the tutorials from the learners perspective who take the tutorials . Moreover , 3 learners wereinterviewed in order to get detailed information.The questioner was developed using Bader Al Khan evaluation checklistfor E- learning evaluation in combination with the researcher modifications.

Findings:

The data was analyzed using SPSS software , the following table showthe data analysis.

-90%of the participants agree that the course objectives are clearlystated.-80%of the participants agree that The learning objectives help thelearner to focus on learning activities.-60%of the participants agree that The content is well-organized and presented in a logical fashion.-70%of the participants agree that The content is arranged in easilyunderstandable chunks of information.-90%of the participants agree that The course content is correct,realistic, and up-to-date.

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviationq1 10 1.00 2.00 1.1000 .31623q2 10 1.00 2.00 1.2000 .42164q3 10 1.00 2.00 1.4000 .51640q4 10 1.00 2.00 1.3000 .48305q5 10 1.00 2.00 1.1000 .31623q6 10 1.00 3.00 1.6000 .84327q7 10 1.00 3.00 2.4000 .69921q8 10 1.00 3.00 2.2000 .91894q9 10 1.00 2.00 1.2000 .42164q10 10 1.00 2.00 1.1000 .31623q11 10 1.00 3.00 2.1000 .73786Valid N (listwise( 10