Primer for Teaching Online
6. Effective Online Assessment
The online classroom offers myriad ways of assessing students comprehension levels. The traditional methods such as tests and quizzes are still commonly used in the online classroom, but you will find that the web-based classroom offers many other ways of assessing student knowledge. A combination of assessment methods will give instructors an accurate view of student abilities while providing an intellectually stimulating environment for their students.
Group Discussions
Group projects allow students to interact among other classmates while providing several assessment opportunities for the instructor. Group projects of moderate to long duration allow the instructor to assign a different group moderator each week. The group moderator can plan and facilitate the regularly scheduled group planning sessions while developing the leadership skills of each student. A combination of peer critiquing and instructor input can be used to grade the efforts of the moderator.
Tests and Quizzes
Carried over from the traditional classroom is the test or quiz. Online testing formats include the familiar multiple choice , true-false , matching , short answer , and essay tests . As an added benefit, most course management systems (CMS) such as WebCT and Blackboard now offer electronic testing and grading capabilities for most question formats. These CMS’s also allow instructors to dig deeper into student scores to see how long students took to answer questions and the analysis of question statistics such as the percentage of students missing each question.
Discussion Boards or Message Forums
The discussion area offers another opportunity for student assessment. Instructor can have a discussion question or statement posted on a regular basis that requires comment by students. To get a passing grade, students must log in regularly to the discussion board to read and post comments . To ensure that students read and interact with other student comments, an additional grade can be given for each discussion posting that relates back to the original student posting. Most course management systems have the ability to track discussion board interactions, greatly simplifying the instructor task of tracking and grading discussion postings for each student.
Electronic Assignment Drop Box
Online classrooms can also include an electronic assignment drop box. Electronic drop boxes allow students to upload assignments directly into their online course for review and comment by the instructor. If desired, these assignments can also be made available to classmates for review and comment by uploading to a public area of the course. A discussion forum can then be opened for student comment and review. If desired, most course management systems support anonymous discussion forums where the reviewer’s name will remain unknown to other students.
Electronic Portfolio
The electronic portfolio is a popular and highly effective method for assessing student knowledge. Electronic portfolios are created for each student and contain all electronic assignments submitted for each online class taken. The electronic portfolio follows the student from course to course and from semester to semester, providing a record of academic accomplishment that goes far beyond the traditional transcript.
Additional Resources
- Methods of Online Assessment, The University of Adelaide
- Assessment Websites, Ephraim Schechter first posted the list in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Later, it lived at the University of North Carolina system office and at North Carolina State University. NC State kindly continues to host it. The list currently has over 1,200 links, including over 400 college and university assessment sites.
- Evaluation and Assessment, Carnegie Melon University
- My Learning and Class Portfolio, University of Washington
