The best way of evaluating if a course has been successful, and to find ways of improving the next course you teach, is to set up an evaluation process before you start. Involving students can also be helpful as then they will be more engaged in contributing to the evaluation. A simple questionnaire could be used after each session, for example:

Name 3 (or more) good things about today’s session

Name 3 (or more) bad things about today’s session

How can things be improved?

Remember that some students may be reluctant to ‘criticise’, especially if they come from cultures which value uncritical respect for teachers. In this case you may need to induct students into the reasons for evaluation!

WWW references

Rather than a very long list of websites, here are a few which are directly relevant or which give you very good links to every site you could possibly need.

Problem based learning

Samford university

http://www.samford.edu.au.pbl/how2.html

University of Maastricht

http://www.unimaas.nl/~edineb/

Classroom of the future

http://www.cotf.edu/ete/main.html

Especially useful on this site is the temperate rainforest project:

http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/temprain/temprain.html

Forests and timber

Western Australian Forest Alliance

This website has a wonderful collection of links about every aspect of forests in all States and Territories. it also has environmental search engines and directories, so this site is the gateway to just about all sites you may need from forestry legislation to ethical investment:

http://www.wafa.org.au/links.html

ABC Radio National

The ABC Radio National website enables you to download useful program transcripts covering environmental aspects such as biodiversity, a well as telling you of forthcoming programs. Earthbeat, The Science Show, Background Briefing are all helpful and interesting and there are many more:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/

Victorian Dept of Natural Resources and the Environment)

The index for the Victorian Government site for NRE (Dept of Natural Resources and the Environment):

http://www.nre.gov.au/forestry/educ/look.htm

(these are web pages edited in 1999. Beware, as there are some older, 1996 NRE pages still on the web which are less useful and which present sheets of information (e.g. on woodchipping and clearfelling) as objective truth, when in reality they are very one-sided. The 1999 pages are a great improvement, however part of this project is to establish criteria for evaluating media, so all kinds of resources are opportunities for learning.

Museum education

GEM

The Group for Education in Museums will give you many links and articles about learning through museums.

http://www.gem.org.uk/index.html

Melbourne Museum

Setting up the program and selecting participants

Initial or Placement Assessment

Developing the curriculum and assessment processes

Deliver the Program

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the program