Student assessments are critical and in this brave new world of online teaching, instructors have had to reassess how they assess their students. Proper assessments are essential to determining if students are benefitting from instruction and meeting learning objectives, and they help give professors a sense of direction for future lessons and lectures, to help them monitor and adjust.
There are several general ways to track students’ progress and retention. Curriculum-based tests can help professors measure student learning. Classroom observation and interactions can help instructors more informally gauge their effectiveness and student receptiveness. Professors can use formative assessment to monitor student progress to see what students actually know. Giving frequent evaluations let professors identify the gaps in student learning and where students might need additional instruction.
Online learning has thrown a wrench into the typical student assessment methods, however. With more college students learning remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of professors now need to tweak and optimize their tried-and-true class assessment methods. In a normal semester, instructors use a variety of assessment methods, and most are still available when teaching online. However, they need to be managed differently. There are also some additional assessment methods as well.
The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State offers guidance on managing online assessments and provides suggestions for assessment methods available for online teaching. There are two specific aspects of student learning that professors can assess online, interactivity, collaborative learning, and collective construction of knowledge.
Online assessment methods that appropriately measure cognitive levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives include:
- Knowledge: Multiple choice, true/false, matching, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, quizzes
- Comprehension: Simulations, animations, tutorials
- Application: Multiple choice, short answer, essay, tutorials, simulations, case studies
- Analysis/Synthesis/Evaluation: Multiple choice, essay, project, portfolio, simulation, presentation, paper, virtual lab, case studies
Professors can continue to use formative assessments like discussions in the form of blogs, boards, and chats, according to Penn State. They can also use short-answer or multiple-choice quizzes to get and give feedback to students on course material and learning objectives so students can identify areas of weakness to focus their future study. Instructors can use summative assessments like term projects, portfolios and presentation to assign course grades and make more comprehensive conclusions of student mastery of course objectives. Online summative assessments can also include mid-terms and final exams
The Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell University recommends four ideas for online grading and assessment, along with technologies that can facilitate each approach.
- Student groups online: Create smaller communities of students who connect through course content and collaborative assignments and develop projects reports or papers. Using Groups in Canvas can help professors and students share files, post announcements, conduct group discussions and create collaborative pages. Assessment strategies include using a rubric and provide both quantitative and qualitative feedback via Speedgrader.
- Collaborative writing and publishing online: Professors can build a collective class knowledge base online where students can share work. Technologies such as CampusPress can help students create user-friendly blogs or websites using media and text and by selecting layout options. Assess collaborative writing and publishing online by providing students with a visual design rubric and content standards, offering feedback via the commenting tool and by reviewing all user posts to evaluate the quantity and quantity of student participation.
- Group reading and annotating: Try engaging students with collaborative close reading and annotating course-related material asynchronously. Tools such as Perusall and Hypothes.is allow students to select text for annotation and commentary and view classmates’ input. Assess by providing a rubric for evaluation criteria.
- Online conversations, discussions and chats: Try communicating online synchronously or asynchronously using vide, chat and discussion boards. Hold office hours online, host outside speakers and hold classes from remote locations. Use tools such as Piazza and Discussions in Canvas to allow students to post and respond to written topics, prompts, comments and questions so professors can gauge content understanding and skill building. Assess students by providing success criteria and rubrics at the beginning of the course and provide feedback via Speedgrader or Gradebook.