Assessments
Completion requirements
Key Takeaways
1. Align assessments with course learning objectives and choose methods that demonstrate learning while reducing stressors and minimizing cheating.
2. Include multiple types of assessments in your course to allow for holistic and diverse opportunities to evaluate learning and performance.
Assessment allows us to measure students’ ability to apply the content they have learned, and is commonly provided in a multiple choice or similar format. While this common assessment method is simple to conceptualize and replicate in the online environment, it is important to consider challenges that may be encountered with technology (especially during an emergency situation), ensuring academic integrity, and whether it is the best option for accurately measuring learning.
When moving unexpectedly to an online environment, consider how your existing assessments can be offered remotely, and if/how they are impacted by any change in grading policies or other procedures during an emergency. Key considerations might include a review of which concepts are essential to assess, whether intermittent lower-stakes assessment might be effective, and how the alternative assessment methods discussed above may be helpful to both students and instructors in balancing learning and assessment with a stressful environment due to an emergency situation.
Particularly during a situation in which students were not expecting to complete their courses online, high-stakes testing in the online environment can create additional stress in an already stressful environment, and impact accurate reflection of learning. Additionally, the use of proctoring tools to prevent cheating bear privacy concerns (especially for students who did not choose an online environment for the course), potentially cause undue stress on students, and may have excessive flags for potential cheating due to the circumstances of working/learning at home during a crisis. Considering alternative (or additional) options for assessment allows for more accurate assessment of learning and avoids some of these challenges, resulting in a better experience for both students and instructors.
In their presentation, Measuring Student Learning in Online Courses: Assessment Strategies that Work, Crosslin et. al. (2020) provide a great summary of considerations and challenges, as well as recommendations for both emergency remote teaching and general best practices for online assessment.
Integrating multiple forms of assessment allows students more opportunities to evaluate their performance. Four alternative assessment methods identified in the literature are focusing on skills that can be applied outside of the classroom (authentic assessment), involving students in the learning and assessment process (active assessment), measuring learning throughout the learning process rather than at the end (formative and summative assessment), and engaging students in work either offline or even just online but outside of the LMS (experiential assessment). These methods provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning, allow instructors to understand students’ application of learning, and may reduce testing stress, environmental stress, and cheating behaviors in an online course.
Multiple choice (or similar) assessments are still an option, and still have value for online courses. They are a great low-stakes option for learning practice (i.e. allow students to re-take multiple times, use as a ‘check for understanding,’ allow for open-book test-taking, etc.), and there are also some options for minimizing cheating that do not rely on proctoring. When using multiple choice assessments in the online environment, randomized questions, shuffled answer options, and large question pools are great options that address some of the challenges with this type of assessment.
Beginner
Develop assessments that can be implemented in the online environment. Here is a link to a basic guide to online assessment.Intermediate
Design learner-centered assessments that include a variety of options and opportunities to demonstrate learning throughout the course.Advanced
Design and include grading rubrics for the assessment of all course assignments, collaborations, and contributions.
Last modified: Monday, July 6, 2020, 3:02 PM