Open University faculty create their own instructional materials for use in distance teaching. A methodology is described for evaluating the teaching effectiveness of the materials and the teaching methods used. It is applied to a unit of a materials science course written for a specific text. A small group of students in the course was surveyed for their reactions to the method and text. They responded to questions about the instructor's outline, course objectives, the introduction to the unit, instructions on how to study the text, the study strategy itself, specific course activities (experiments to be conducted at home), self-assessment questions included by the instructor in the unit, and questions in the text. Ten suggestions are made about the importance and usefulness of the course elements evaluated by the study. (MSE)