What is the Purpose of Assessment in Online Learning?
Assessment is the process of gathering, analyzing, and communicating information about learners’ progress toward and achievement of identified learning outcomes.
Instructors use assessment information to provide learners with timely, actionable feedback on their progress and performance, as well as to adjust and improve teaching practices. Assessment is more than assigning grades – along with feedback, assessment is an integral part of the learning experience designed to promote success.
Benefits of Assessment in Online Learning
In online learning, assessment has several unique benefits, such as (Seneca College et al., 2022):
- online assessments provide flexibility and convenience for both learners and instructors;
- learners can often complete online assessments at their own pace and in their own space;
- learners can participate in online group projects that promote collaboration and peer feedback;
- some online assessments can provide learners with immediate, automated feedback and grades;
- instructors can access and grade assessments from anywhere and at any time; and
- online assessments can be more cost-effective and environmentally friendly than in-person assessments.
Challenges of Assessment in Online Learning
Despite the benefits of assessment in online learning, there are some challenges instructors should be aware of (Seneca College et al., 2022):
- online learners may not fully understand assessment requirements, grading criteria, and submission procedures;
- learners with time-management issues may struggle to complete assessments on time;
- online assessments can be particularly vulnerable to academic integrity issues such as plagiarism or cheating;
- in asynchronous online courses, instructors can’t base assessments on real-time observations and conversations with learners;
- providing personalized feedback on online assessments can be time-consuming and cumbersome for instructors;
- differences in learners’ schedules, time zones, and technology access can make it hard for them to participate in online assessments;
- online tests and exams may require proctoring; and
- learners with disabilities may have difficulty accessing and participating in online assessments.
How Can I Design and Implement Effective Assessments for Online Learners?
Assessment provides a means to promote learning in both discipline-specific and transferrable knowledge, skills, and attitudes, which opens the door to a variety of assessment strategies through which learners can demonstrate their abilities. When designing and implementing online assessments, the following six (6) practices of assessment design will foster learning and success in the online context.
Set and communicate transparent learning goals for each assessment
To be successful, learners need to understand what they are being asked to demonstrate. Assessments that list relevant learning outcomes, accompanied by explicit grading criteria and performance standards, reduce confusion and ambiguity for both online learners and instructors.
Provide opportunities for learners to demonstrate knowledge and skills in different ways
Online assessment strategies need to acknowledge and respond to diverse learner strengths, needs, and interests. Rather than a one-size-fits-all proctored testing approach, online assessment designs should involve choice, personalization, and the opportunity to incorporate lived experiences. Employing a variety of assessment modalities that allow for multiple means of action and expression and using a mixture of technology tools create an assessment strategy that is fair, inclusive, and accessible.
Create relevant, engaging assessments that connect to real-world behaviours
Assessments that connect to real-world behaviours promote career readiness by allowing learners to become aware of their job-related skills and articulate how their learning can be applied in practice. Maintaining learner motivation and engagement is critical to success in online learning, as it is easy for online learners to feel disconnected from the content, the instructor, and their course peers.
Incorporate timely, meaningful action
Remember that assessment is an ongoing process that invites us to design scaffolded opportunities for learners to demonstrate their advancing knowledge and skills throughout a course. Learners benefit from immediate, meaningful, and actionable feedback following each of these opportunities. This is especially true in asynchronous online learning environments when learners need to decide for themselves whether they are ready to proceed to the next set of learning goals (Seneca College et al., 2022).
Make assignments easy to manage and success-oriented
Online coursework, particularly with asynchronous elements, gives learners more choices about how they can engage with the course. This can provide more flexibility and freedom, but it requires learners to manage their own learning effectively and proactively. Help your learners focus more on learning and less on managing their workload with these strategies:
- Chunk big assignments. Large assignments put a lot of stress on specific weeks, so losing a week of work for any reason can heavily impact learner success. A well-designed online course spreads the workload out as evenly as possible and allows instructors to accommodate timelines as needed.
- Create routines and habits. Consider repeating assignments that occur regularly, like weekly reading reflections, daily problem sets, or regular discussion forums. Create predictability by having regular due dates and instructions.
- Make the content needed for assignments convenient. If learners need a particular article or weblink for an assignment, make it available with the assignment instructions. Clearly label files and materials so learners can easily identify what they need to complete an assignment.
Be intentional about community and learner input
You may find that meaningful engagement and connection happen differently in online learning than in traditional in-person learning. Learners can become disconnected if the assessments are not meaningful to them, especially with asynchronous formats. These strategies can help you to get learners more engaged with assessments.
- Try group projects – if it makes sense. While group projects can be more difficult to organize, they are a great way to get learners in the course to know each other and build a collaborative learning community.
- Introduce low-stakes community-building assignments. Try starting off with something very simple, like a self-introduction discussion topic that asks learners to post something about themselves using text. You can also ask learners to post responses to each other’s discussion threads to deepen their connections around shared interests, experiences, or communities.
- Let learners influence assignments. Consider assignments that connect to topics and issues that learners care about. Include an element of learner choice and gather feedback from learners on the design of the assignment. You might even have learners contribute to rubrics or grading criteria (Stanford Teaching Commons).
TIP: Assessment serves two primary purposes in teaching and learning: formative and summative.
Formative assessments are improvement-oriented, ungraded, or lower-stakes assessments of learning that occur while learners are developing their knowledge and skills. Formative assessments inform instructors about the effectiveness of their teaching and provide ongoing feedback to learners about what they know and have yet to learn.
- Examples of formative assessments include polls, formative quizzes, self-reflection, and peer assessments.
Summative assessments are higher stakes, graded assessments of performance at the end of a learning unit. Summative assessments evaluate, or judge, how well learners have met learning outcomes as measured against a set of performance standards.
- Examples of summative assessments include mid-term tests, essays, presentations, and final exams.
Source: Ministry of Education. (2010). Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools: First Edition, Covering Grades 1 to 12. Province of Ontario. https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/growsuccess.pdf
Let’s Review
Let’s review some key assessment terms.
Now, let’s consider how to design and implement practical online assessments in a blended or online course. Which strategies should you use to support your students’ success in online assessments? (Check all that apply.)
Additional Resources
The following are additional resources for this topic:- You can learn more about formative and summative online assessments on the Stanford Teaching Commons’ website.
References
This guide has been reproduced from content found in Module 4: Assessment in Online Environments, in the Online Teaching Fundamentals Micro-credential course by eCampus Ontario and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
