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Blended & Online Learning Design Fellows

Blended & Online Learning Design Fellows

Assessment

Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not learning goals are being met. When planning a course or unit, it is often helpful to begin by thinking about learning goals first—the destination where you want to take students—and then plan assessments to serve as a “road map” for leading students to that desired destination. This way, you can ensure that there is alignment between your learning goals and assessments (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005; click here for more information on Understanding By Design).

Keeping these learning goals in mind, assessments can take different shape. Formative assessments allow instructors to monitor student learning and provide feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning (see examples here). Alternatively, summative assessments are used to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit (e.g., midterm exam, final project, paper). Ideally, instructors will integrate both types of assessment to guide their instruction and help students meet learning goals.

Assessments can be as varied as the needs of the course. Below are some examples of some tools that can be used for assessment in an online environment.

Quizzing with feedback

  • HapYak and Zaption can be used to introduce in-video quizzes with feedback—and can also be used to segment the video and to highlight important ideas, both of which can help with student learning (link to our TG).
  • YouTube Annotations can be used to introduce in-video questions, which can be answered in subsequent parts of the video, as well as to segment the video and highlight important ideas.
  • You can create stand-alone quizzes/questions using Google Forms, which also gives you the option of providing feedback on student responses (see, for example, Dave Caudel’s project on celestial navigation).
  • If you’re using PowerPoint to create a learning object, you can create an interactive quiz with feedback using the hyperlink feature. Saving it as a Powerpoint Show (.ppts) allows students to interact with it as a learning object.
  • Blackboard (and other LMSs) provide testing and survey features that allow you to create a variety of question types, to provide feedback on some of those question types, and to maintain secure records of student grades.

Writing assignments

Writing assignments can be a great way to assess student learning. In an online environment, instructors often structure their students’ writing using one of these tools:

Adding a peer- or self-assessment can enrich the learning experience for students.

Annotation

Social annotation provides a mechanism for students to respond to a text or image, identifying elements of interest and engaging with their peers and instructor in this discussion. It can be a great way for students and instructors to gauge learning. Some social annotation tools are:

 

Other assessments

The Coursera platform offers many of these features, and also facilitates the use of programming assignments for assessment.