Best Practices & What Works in Online Learning Assessments Renee Welch & Karin Riggs External Education September 28, 2006

Evaluation & Grades “Evaluation is a method, which may or may not be graded, of eliciting a performance or demonstration of knowledge or skills from a student”. “Grades are the descriptive faculty evaluation of an individual student's performance in a given course, test, or assignment. Grades oftentimes incorporate participation, attendance and/or extra credit, which are not true components of assessment of learning outcomes”.

Assessment “Assessment is the examination of whether students as a whole are achieving the learning outcomes which have been developed by the department for a course or program. Assessment provides the "big picture" of whether students are meeting learning objectives”.

Good Assessment Measures meaningful learning outcomes Easy to administer, score, interpret Informs the teacher about student performance Provides meaningful feedback to the learner Contributes to the learning process

Types of Assessment Pre and Post Test Objective & Subjective Assessment Self-Assessments & Practice exams Group Projects Discussion Participation Peer Review Interactive assessments

Assessment Plan Considerations What do you want students to learn? What knowledge do they already have? Which assessment methods best test what was learned by learners? Will you test memorization or performance? How will assessment be graded, what percentage in grades? Size of class, small numbers vs high enrollment course? How many assessments should you include? How will students receive feedback? How will you grade, do you need TA support?

Communicating Expectations Learning Objectives Grading Criteria Explanation of participation Calendar of assignments and assessments

Providing Feedback Am I on the right track? Online gradebook Self-assessments Peer Reviews Formation of assignments and assessments

Content Mapping

Respondus & StudyMate 2 great choices to increase your assessment options. Both work essentially the same way: download them for free at: then… –Run a search for Respondus. Once on the download page be sure to note all installation instructions, including the installation password, used for both Respondus and StudyMate… when you find Respondus, StudyMate will download as well.

Both applications have a very easy interface… 1.Create a new file 2.Add some questions 3.View the exam 4.Publish to Blackboard

Easy to create questions- no need to be ONLINE

Studymate allows for questions to be in different formats… MATCHING FLASH CARDS

It’s easy to “publish” your new assessment to Blackboard… Follow along the Wizard… 1.open your browser, go to the Blackboard "Login" page 2.copy the "address" of the page from the browser 3.Paste into the top field in the Respondus wizard… THEN 4.In your browser go to the course you want to use, 5.go the to the "control panel" page and copy the address 6.Paste into the second field in the Respondus wizard… THEN 7.Press extract...

Field #1= The BB log in page Address… Field #2= The control panel page Address… Press EXTRACT

Other Blackboard features… Grading Rubrics Gradebook Cheating Safe Assignment ePortfolios

For more information contact: Renee Welch, Ph.D Karin Riggs