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Week 1: Overview

Possible Design Topics

Assessment

In learner-centred teaching, courses are usually designed with statements of objectives or learning outcomes. Objectives help learners to see what the instructor intends to teach them during a course. Learning outcomes identify the skills and knowledge the learner should achieve after completing the course. 

The learning outcomes (or objectives) are helpful to instructors as they can be used to focus the design and facilitation of learning events and ensure that assessments are meaningful and fair. Assessments are the tools and methods instructors use to monitor, measure and document the progress of each participant's learning. Well-designed learning activities and assessments help to identify where the learner should focus efforts to improve understanding or skills.

Purpose of Assessments

Assessments can be used in a variety of ways:

  • Pre-assessments are used to identify important information about a learner's knowledge and skills when they begin a course.
  • Formative assessments are used throughout the course to track the progress of each learner and to provide opportunities for the instructor to share constructive feedback. Often formative assessments are not graded and may involve peer-to-peer assessments or self-assessments.
  • Summative assessments are used to evaluate the progress a learner has made towards the stated objectives or outcomes. These evaluations may be based on performance in an activity, through an exam, or by the learner creating a product demonstrating their learning.

Note:  Formative assessments are sometimes called "assessments for learning" as they serve to guide and encourage learners to persist and improve their knowledge and skills.

When learning takes place online, different assessment tools and strategies can be used. As learning often takes place within environments that can record discussions or actions, there is a great deal of information an instructor can use to analyze each student's learning. If learning takes place in remote locations, technology can provide opportunities for students to share their individual or local community-based projects with the group online.

Self-assessment strategies on utilize journaling and rubrics, as part of reflective practice and can be combined with peer-to-peer and facilitator-directed assessments. Previous FLO workshops included a consideration of the need to assess participation of students in online courses.

You may want to expand the consideration of this important topic as you focus on design issues.

Resources (FLO):

Note:  This reading is not available online - Liu, Shijuan. (2007). Assessing Online Asynchronous Discussion in Online Courses: An Empirical Study. Technology, Colleges and Community 2007 Proceedings, pp 24-31.