As part of your pivot to online teaching, you may be thinking about how you will assess your students’ learning online. Given you already have assessment strategies in your course, prior to the shift to online, you now have two options basically – changing the mode from face-to-face to online or changing the assessment type. If the latter, you should speak to your Head of School/Chair, principal, program director, or anyone in your institution who oversees the curriculum to confirm whether you have permission to change the type of assessment as many institutions have a strict assessment change approval processes that will need to be followed. If you are changing the mode, then you have to consider what technology you might use. Either way, it is a good opportunity to review your assessment and ensure that it aligns with your learning outcomes. You want to make sure that your assessments assess your students’ achievement of the intended learning outcomes and correspond to the activities and resources in your course.
Changing the Assessment Type
When we’re not moving courses online in a hurry, learning designers emphasize a thread through the curriculum: learning outcomes inform and reflect teaching and learning activities and assessment focuses on outcomes and what was taught or learned. Typically, this is a detailed process that involves teams of designers and academics working together. But we’re in crisis mode this semester, so getting assessments up and available to students is the primary concern.
As such, there are a variety of types of assessments you could include in your course and selecting the right ones depends on a variety of factors. Below is a list of factors to consider when designing assessments.
The learning outcomes:
Some assessment tasks lend themselves better to certain types of learning outcomes. For example, learning outcomes that require students to demonstrate a scientific experiment, may involve lab reports or simulations while learning outcomes related to students argument and critical analysis skills may require students to write an argumentative essay or take part in an online debate.
The program structure:
In some cases, a course may be part of an integrated program whereby different assessment types have been previously determined in order for students to have experience with a variety of assessment tasks. For example, if all courses in a program of study involved student presentations and short papers only, students wouldn’t have an opportunity to demonstrate their achievement of the learning outcomes through other types of tasks. It’s best to check to see if there are expectations for your course to have specific assessment tasks.
The class and the students:
Size of the class – consider the number of students you have and the time available for providing feedback. For example, if you have 100 students and plan to do all the marking and feedback yourself, you may not want to have long individual essays. Instead, you may choose to have students work in groups and produce a collaborative report. This would provide students with the authentic task of working together, building teamwork skills, and minimize the number of assessments to mark allowing you to provide more quality feedback.
Diversity of students:
When designing assessment tasks it is important to consider the diversity of your student population. For example, if your students come from different cultural backgrounds or experiences in the workplace, design your assessment tasks to leverage this diversity. Collaborative teamwork, where teams consist of students from different backgrounds, can help them share their experiences and learn from one another when completing an assessment. Further, it is important to design assessment tasks that are inclusive of all your students or to provide alternative arrangements.
Below is a list of technology-enhanced assessment strategies. While this list is not exhaustive, it provides some ideas of technologies you could consider.
Changing the Assessment Mode
To change your assessment from face-to-face to online, you will need to consider the technology that you will use. Below are a few things to consider when moving to online assessment:
- Make sure students have time to practice using the online tool, particularly if they have not used the technology before.
- Trial the assessment task to make sure the instructions are clear. Have a teaching assistant or a colleague review the instructions.
- Provide instructions for what students should do if the technology fails. For example, if the learning management system goes down right when students are due to submit an assessment, what should they do?
The University of South Australia has developed a matrix of typical assessment types and listed alternatives when changing the mode of the assessment. While the examples are largely focused on Zoom and Moodle, the principles apply to any learning management system or video conferencing technology.
Reading
Crosslin, M., et al. (2018). Assessment and Grading Issues. In Creating Online Learning Experiences. Mavs Open Press.
Recommended sections:
- Grading in Online Courses
- Framing Learners
- Types of Assessment
- Suggestions for Assessment Practices
- Standardized and Open-Ended Rubrics
Next: Assessment Activity