Rounding up - assessment; ending a course

Joanne SintesFernando LópezJorge Bascón

Top Tips

For Asynchronous Online Assessment

“Assessment as a process requires that online learning activities facilitate self-assessment,

peer-assessment, self-regulatory mechanisms, and learner autonomy.”

(*Vonderwell s, Xin L, and Alderman K (2007) Asynchronous Discussions and Assessment in Online Learning)

The creation of a learning community promotes peer learning and scaffolding through access to other

student’s thoughts and viewpoints.

Build a community.

Set clear criteria and objectives

Favour ‘assessment for learning’ so, students fully understand their learning and the goals they are aiming for through feedback.

Avoid simplifying assessment with a simple pass or fail, or even percentages or similar.

Establish whether your assessment is going to be formative or summative and be transparent about this with your learners

Make it clear to students from the outset whether participation is required/graded or not, and how it affects their total mark/grade. Ensure that each learner understands the level of participation that is expected of them.

Bear in mind the issue of poor writing skills as a factor in assessing a student’s contributions, i.e. in L1 speakers. Be clear on the objective of the assessment and make it clear to students the level that will be expected or not.

Consider a global impression mark for contributions, plus marks for specific skills/categories. Relevance to the topic (staying 'on message'), creativity e.g. moving the discussion forward/ introducing new angles/ideas/finding solutions, responsiveness to/support for peers, etc.

Careful when creating your own criteria: it's very time-consuming and there are bound to be very good ones already available.

Consider quality of participation

Avoid the use of non-threaded discussions: they limit student’s responses and encourage redundant responses whereas threaded ones result in a more in-depth and diverse responses and help develop more interactions.

Be clear about what you expect from students. Give examples of posts that show some reflection and bring a valid contribution to the conversation.

Encourage your learners to post contributions that follow that model. Provide ‘meta cognitive guides’ during the discussion and provide feedback afterwards. Having a structured discussion increases effectiveness.

Check the quality of your questions to avoid redundant responses. Carefully use open and closed questions according to your aim.

Provide variety oftopic, forum and assessment.  

Set up different task types/types of participation for assessment:   * students answer questions, * respond to peers' comments and posts, * submit questions for discussion, * design discussion tasks for their peers, * summarize threads

Structure tasks in such a way that students respond to each other and not to the instructor/the criteria.

Encourage learners to use forums for sharing and testing out ideas about learning and not only to use the assessed forums.

Archive discussions so that both tutors and learners can refer to them later on if need be. 

Use opportunities for peer and self-assessment as a tool to encourage reflection and learner autonomy.

Consider Learning skills

Use formative assessment (assessing what they have produced) as a guide for self and peer reflection, in order for them to better assess their own understanding of the content they are learning.

Remember student’s learning is based on a group of different factors.

Consider assessment the main tool to facilitate student learning; a way to assess student work in progress.

Only use summative assessment to gage your learner’s progress. Provide opportunity for reflection on how they got to the correct answer. Online discussions can help activate reflective learning and self assessment, e.g., when writing a post the learner things carefully about what they are going to say knowing the group will be reading it.

Top Tips For Synchronous

Online Assessment

“One of the most marvelousthings about

online technology is thefact that all discussions

are recorded and documented”.

(Ideas for Effective Online Instruction. George Drops. April 2003)

Overview synchronous online assessment

Dealing with ambiguity: Statements could be consider a question, or a doubt, how you deal

with counter-arguments. How information moves through development of a conversation  

Presence and absence: Physical versus virtual presence. Students may appear to be logged on but are not participating. Researching topic? Thinking?

 Coding the data:  Turns, Speech acts, strategies to summarize opinions

Tutor/Facilitator May influence process, may interpret based on belief rather than evidence. 

Social strategies: Group development when insecure about a particular topic

Group sizes: Larger groups or small ones is a influence when participation is assessed.

Exploratory talk: In terms of creativity adding new ideas, perspectives and/or informationThe students come up with suggestions or solutions

Research about before any assessment begins Participation: Getting a group of learners together - particularly a large group - presents too many challenges

Roles:  A variety of roles will occur and it would seem that occupying any of the roles should be assessed the same.

Deep learning: 

How information obtained is being processed and added to existing schema. Difficult to determine or assess this directly via a synchronous chat in anything but the most subjective

way

 Community: How responsive and supportive is a student to his/her peers? Does a student contribute to the social cohesion of the group?

 Can develop argumentation skills.

 

Benefits of synchronous assessment

Can be less teacher dominated (than F2F discussions).

Enables students to participate more equally (than F2F).

Provides students with a sense of community.

Can provide rhythm for distance learning program.

Difficulties of synchronous assessment

Heavy cognitive load for tutor.

Students may feel intimidated by speed and language.

Overlapping threads and turns out of sequence can make conversation difficult to follow.

Literature in this field of online synchronous assessment considers that it should be based on the student, not tutor.

And then, constructivism is established as the main protagonist in this design framework covering student/course

design/facilitator in an abstract view:

Activities to round up and finish a course.

After having so much emotional and professional contact with the rest of participants the end is as important as the beginning of an online course. We need to give all the students, as in a f2f course, the chance to say goodbye to everybody and to share everything that has been learnt.

E-closure is probably one of the most strange steps of an online course because do you have just to say bye? do you send a final mark and feedback and then close the course down?

You have the chance, as a participant or a tutor, to offer a farewell to the rest of your group. A gift can be almost anything such as a joke, a poem, a piece of music by the participant, a home-made video, a useful website...

Act 1: Parting Gifts.

This activity asks the students to point out the ONE most important thing that they have learned during the course. Participants need to choose just one although it is very difficult after having learnt so many new things. Here, again, we are not just concentrating on one thing such as an activity, a free voice application or a new programme they have learnt, participants can make comments on their emotions when sharing knowledge and time with some new people. It is better to create this activity with an online notice board or poster tool such as Golgster or Wallwisher. It keeps all contributions short and easier to read at once.

 

Act 2: The Most Important Thing I've learned

www.glogster.com A very interactive way to make your own poster and share it with your friends.

www.wallwisher.com An online notice board maker that allows people to express their feelings and thoughts.

Joanne, Fernando and JorgeFebruary 2012