Measuring student learning is always a challenge no matter what the delivery format. Your choices are limited by time, resources and creativity. When thinking about student assessment in a course, the following questions may help decide how many and what types of assessments you will include in your course.
- What is it you want your students to learn? (see Assessment and learning objectives)
- What do they already know? Is a pre-test needed to measure prior knowledge?
- Which assessment methods match your teaching style?
- What assessment method will best test what your students learned?
- Will you test memorization or performance?
- Will these assessments be low or high stakes? (what portion of final grade)
- Should you use adaptive testing? (will the test adapt to user responses)
- How many assessments are sufficient? How many papers should you assign? How many quizzes and exams will be enough?
- Will the number of students affect the type of assessment you choose?
- How quickly will students receive feedback?
- How much time will you spend correcting or commenting on assessments?
- How much grading support will you have?
The types of assessments selected and the methods used for submitting assessments should be appropriate for the online learning environment, such as:
- submission of text or media files by email or 'drop box'
- exams given in a proctored testing center
- quizzes with time limitations, printing disabled, and other security measures
- multiple assessments which enable the instructor to become familiar with individual students' work and which discourage 'proxy cheating' (someone other than the student completing and submitting work)
Examples that are not appropriate:
- required assessments that cannot be submitted online, such as a lab practicum in a science course
- a course in which the entire set of assessments consists of 5 multiple choice tests taken online, with no enforced time limit, the print function enabled, and minimal security features in place
