14.5: Authentic Student Assessment Strategies for The Online Environment

Often when we talk of assessment in an online environment, we think of automated quizzes and grade books. While useful in many circumstances, automated quizzes do not always accurately reflect a student’s abilities, especially when you are asking them to achieve a higher level of difficulty in the cognitive learning domain, to demonstrate a physical skill in the psychomotor learning domain, or to evaluate attitudes in the affective learning domain (see description of learning domains and degrees of difficulty at http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd /bloom.html). Authentic assessment—assessing student abilities to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes to real world problems—is not only possible in an online environment; it is getting more popular.

Preparing An Assignment for Assessment

The first step to assessing online work is to prepare each assignment. Since students may not have you around to ask questions, you need to anticipate the types of information that students need. There are some standard items to include in your instructions for all types of online assignments:

• Name of the assignment (This should be the same name as listed in the syllabus).
• Learning objective(s) to which this assignment relates.
• When the assignment is due.
• Any resources that you recommend using to complete the assignment.
• Expectations (length, level of effort, number of citations required, etc.).
• Level of group participation (individual assignments, group or team projects, and entire class projects).
• Process (how students turn in the assignment, if they provide peer review, how peers give feedback, how you give feedback).
• Grading criteria (include rubric if you are using one).

By including these items, you give students a better idea of what you want them to do.

When you consider what types of online assessment strategies to choose, the list will be very similar to the print-based strategies that you know and already use. However, there are a few additional assessment strategies that the online environment makes possible. The list below is not comprehensive by any means. It also does not show which tools could be used to facilitate the different types of assessment strategies. Some of these activities may require students to have access to equipment or software applications to complete.

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Assessment strategies and disciplines that may commonly use them

Type of assessment strategy	Disciplines that might use each assessment strategy
text-based
essay	multiple
glossary	multiple
lab manual	physical sciences
computer code	computer science
technical writing	technical and professional writing
reflection	teacher education, health education, social work
observation log	teacher education, nursing, laboratory sciences
media
image gallery	art, industrial design
web page or website	multiple
presentation	business, public administration
audio	language acquisition
video	theatre arts (monologue), marketing

Notice that some assessment strategies require participation by someone other than the student. For example, a K–12 master teacher would submit an observation log for a credential student performing his or her student teaching. Similarly, a health clinic supervisor would submit an observation log for a nursing student related to his or her abilities to draw blood for testing. A theatre arts student may need someone to record his or her monologue.

Some assessment strategies allow students to get creative. In Chapter 11, Accessibility and Universal Design, the section on Universal Design for Learning discusses the concept of letting students decide what product or process they will use to demonstrate knowledge, skills, or attitudes. Chapter 11 also covers important aspects of making sure that students have access to, or ability to use the technologies required to complete the tasks. Once you do that, you could ask students to create a video advertisement that demonstrates the application of marketing principles, an audio recording that demonstrates mastery of inflection and tone when speaking Mandarin Chinese, or a PowerPoint slide show with audio clips that demonstrates competency with teacher education standards. The age-old practice of storytelling has been “remastered” as digital storytelling through blogs, wikis, podcasts, and more. Students are taking advantage of these new media formats to illustrate that they have met certain requirements. In some cases, each product becomes an “asset” or “artifact” in a larger electronic portfolio that contains items for a single class, an entire program or department, or all curricular and co-curricular work that a student does. Regardless of what products students provide to show their abilities, you need a way to evaluate their work.

Defining Expectations

After determining how students will show how they can meet the learning objectives, it is time to choose an evaluation method. You can use a number of tools, ranging from a simple checklist of criteria to a rubric that contains the same criteria as well as a range of performance and degrees to which students meet the criteria.

You can use qualitative or quantitative degrees to evaluate criteria (see Table \(\PageIndex{2}\) for an example of each). Share the checklist or rubric with students before they begin the assignment, so they know what will be expected of them. In some cases, instructors create the entire rubric, or portions of it, with the students.

Table \(\PageIndex{2}\): Portion of a student presentation assessment rubric

Criteria	Range
	4	3	2	1
Student supports main presentation points with stories or examples	Student effectively used stories and/or examples to illustrate key points.	Presenter used stories and/or examples somewhat effectively to illustrate some key points.	Presenter used some unrelated stories and/or examples that distracted from key points.	Presenter did not use stories or examples to illustrate key points.
	Comments:
Cover project completely, including: Needs Assessment Objectives, Extant Data Analysis, Data Collection Methods, Brief Summary of Data, Collected Data Analysis, Recommendations	Presentation covered all 6 of the areas to the left.	Presentation covered 4 or 5 of the areas to the left.	Presentation covered 2 or 3 of the areas to the left.	Presentation covered 1 or 0 of the areas to the left.
	Comments:

Invite students to use the same rubric for peer review assignments. Students benefit from reviewing peers’ work, as they get to see different ways of approaching the same objective. These same students benefit from their peers’ additional feedback. Let students know that merely giving a numeric score for each criterion is not enough. For peer review to be “constructive criticism,” students must help each other construct better answers, better arguments, and better performance. In addition to clarifying expectations about the assignment through the rubric itself, you must clarify expectations about how students use the rubric for peer review.

Note

If you have never created a rubric before, there are online tools that guide you through the process. Rubistar is “a free tool to help teachers create quality rubrics” (http://rubistar.4teachers.org). The site also has example rubrics and information about how to analyze student performance.

Teaching And Technology in The Assessment Process

The next step in the assessment process is to facilitate the student work in the online environment, or to provide avenues for students to submit their work to you. More online tools emerge every day, it seems, and with them come new opportunities for students to perform activities related to the learning objectives and for us to assess student performance. We will cover a range of tools used for assessment delivery, pros and cons related to using each of these tools, and strategies related to the teaching and the technology aspects of using them.

Email or LISTSERVs

Email can be used for distributing assignments from student to instructor, from student to small group, or from student to the entire class. It will depend on what role peer feedback plays in the overall assignment. Since almost everyone in an educational setting uses email, it seems like an easy solution for students to submit their work for evaluation. However, as easy as it is to use, email is not foolproof. Email messages get blocked by spam filters, by overprotective Internet Service Providers, and by inadequate storage capacity, to name a few possibilities. Another issue with email arises when you try to organize all of the files received for a particular assignment. As you create more assignments, it will be harder to separate one from the other. Attachments sometimes get separated from the email message, and large attachments sometimes do not get through due to size limitations. If you have a large class, the volume of email may become overwhelming.

If you do use email as a mechanism to collect student work for evaluation, then require your students to use a specific email subject that will make them easy to sort, such as “Assignment 3—Juan Doe.” Keep in mind that even with the most explicit instructions, not every student follows them. To assess each student’s work, you will follow the same process as you do for print-based assignments.

Reflective Journals Via Weblogs

Instructors in many fields require students to write journal entries or reflective essays. In some cases, these exercises give students a chance to practise writing. In other cases, journal entry assignments force students to reflect on specific experiences and their attitudes about those experiences. While students can write their reflections almost anywhere, a tool called a weblog provides a forum for students to record their thoughts and, in some cases, to control who can access their reflections. You can find more information about weblogs themselves in Chapters 25 and 27. For the purposes of this chapter, we will focus on assessment strategies for students’ weblog entries.

As journal entries and reflections are not standard for all students, you will have to adopt different assessment strategies. For instance, rather than evaluate the content of the weblog entries, you can evaluate them based on regularity, length and whether or not the content is appropriate to the topic or theme. You may also want to submit notes or comments and possibly ask students to write weblog responses to those comments. Regardless of your approach, make sure that students know how they will be evaluated before they begin the work.

Discussion Forums Without Attachments

Discussion forums are a useful tool to assess student knowledge and attitudes. They can also be used for higher level thinking assignments such as the One Sentence Summary, which requires students to synthesize a complex process (see example directly below). You can assign points to the students’ original work as well as any peer review portion of the assignment.

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Based on the chapter you have read about international export and import regulations, identify a topic that you want to summarize.

PART 1—DUE Friday at 11:59 pm (10 points): Click “Add a new discussion topic” below. For the topic you identified, answer the questions below and string into YOU SENTENCE. If your answer is longer than you sentence, then try again.

Who ________________________________________

does What____________________________________

to Whom (or What) ____________________________

When _______________________________________

Where_______________________________________

How ________________________________________

and Why? ____________________________________

PART 2—DUE Tuesday at 4:00 pm (10 points): Read two or more one-sentence summaries that do not have two replies yet. If it has two replies move to the next one. Select a rating. Click “Reply” and provide feedback:

• If you agree with the summary, say why.
• If you do not agree with the summary, provide evidence and suggestions for improvement.
• If the summary is missing one part (“How”, “Why”, etc.), then fill in the blank.
• Only the instructor’s ratings will count towards the grade. The other students’ ratings are to give you ideas about how much work you may have to do to revise your statement.

Sometimes students wait until the last minute to complete assignments. For a discussion forum assignment, this means that students post their ideas and reply to their peers all in the same brief period before the deadline. Unfortunately, the result is that not all students get replies or feedback for their ideas, even if they completed the assignment well ahead of the deadline.

If you want the students to engage in an actual discussion, then you should break up the assignment into parts with separate deadlines. Assign points to each portion of the assignment to encourage students to complete both parts (see example below).

Example \(\PageIndex{2}\)

WEEK 04 ONLINE ACTIVITY

Step 1: Go to the following online workshop about using existing data: www.k12coordinator.org/onlinece /onlineevents/assessment/index.htm

(NOTE: The workshop says it takes one hour for each of the five sections. That is for their purposes. Plan to spend one or two hours at your own pace. Most of this will be discussion, since there is not too much to read.)

Step 2: Read through the five sections.

Step 3: BY FRIDAY (9/23) AT 11:59 PM, do the following:

• 10 points—Post two original threads (one answering each question in this Forum)
• Use your project name in the title of your reply.

Step 4: BY TUESDAY (9/27) AT 5:00 PM, do the following:

• 10 points—Post two reply threads for each question (one from your team and one from a different team that does not have two responses yet).

Discussion Forums With Attachments

Discussion forums keep track of the date and time that assignments are submitted. This feature helps instructors who may have included a late submission policy in their syllabus, such as “Students will receive half credit for late assignments submitted up to two weeks after the assignment is due.”

Making Online Authentic Assessment An Iterative Process

Online work does not require everyone to be in the same room, at the same time, so you can take advantage of the online environment to make assessment an iterative process. As we previously stated, authentic assessment mimics work that students will encounter in the real world, such as creating antiviral drugs in a biopharmaceutical lab, making presentations to potential donors to a non-profit organization, or teaching civics lessons in an inner-city high school. In these work environments, there are benchmarks or milestones that allow people to check their progress. You can use authentic assessment methods like the peer review rubric to replicate this process. For example, you may have the students provide peer feedback first, as a way to improve their work before turning it in for a grade, or you may have them provide it at the same time as your own with the option to rewrite it. By creating additional parts to each assessment strategy, students will learn even when you are evaluating them.