Approaches to Assessment Online

LEARN: What and Why

Assessments are used for a variety of purposes in teaching, such as:

• to check for student understanding of a given topic;

• to engage and motivate students in learning;

• to collect data on student learning in order to adapt teaching;

• to provide students with feedback on their progress and learning; and

• to evaluate a student’s performance or mastery of skills/knowledge in a course.

It’s important that you, the instructor, are clear on your purpose for assessment: i.e. Why are you asking students to do it? Designing effective, equitable assessments can be challenging in face-to-face learning, and the online learning environment creates some additional concerns around cheating. However, these concerns can be mitigated by thoughtfully choosing and designing a variety of assessments that align with the learning objectives and encourage higher order thinking.

After clearly defining your course and class learning objectives, the next step is to determine how you will check to see if students have achieved those aims, i.e. how you will assess.

Determining Assessment: Step 2 of Backwards Design (UBD)

(Wiggins & McTighe, 2012)

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ENGAGE: How to do it

Choosing the right assessment approach depends on your aims and what would best convey students’ mastery of skills and knowledge developed during the course. Remember, assessment is an ongoing process: it happens before (diagnostic), during (formative), and after (summative) the learning.

Diagnostic Assessments

Diagnostic assessment, or pre-assessment, is designed to test a learner’s knowledge BEFORE they begin a learning journey. The primary purpose is to give the instructor the learner data they need to provide the best possible learning experience. These can include a pre-course “quiz”, designed to determine how much learners currently know or any questions they may have about the course. A non-graded quiz like this also helps familiarize students with how the Moodle/Blackboard quiz/test works.

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Formative Assessments

The purpose of formative assessment is to monitor learning, give students feedback about their work while it is in progress and help students correct errors or missteps. Furthermore, it also allows instructors to become familiar with students’ work, ensure student understanding, and adapt teaching as necessary. It can include methods such as discussion, quizzes, reflections, essays, projects, or presentations. These are lower-stakes assessments that are given periodically throughout the course, and they can be graded or not. Ideally, formative assessments can help students take more ownership of their learning as they can help identify areas where improvement is needed (Theal and Franklin, 2010; Trumbull and Lash, 2013).

Summative Assessments

Summative assessments ask students to demonstrate their mastery over concepts and skills and include things like term papers, class presentations, portfolios, final projects and high-stakes exams.  They are usually completed at the end (or other key points) of the course, graded formally, and used to give the student a final grade in the course. If planned effectively, formative and summative assessments can be used in conjunction to provide students with a chance to learn, grow and demonstrate their competencies gained throughout the course. 

Recap: Best Practices in Assessing

Whether it’s diagnostic, formative or summative, there are common practices assessing, which include:

• Connect the activity to the learning objectives

• Provide clear instructions for the activity

• Give diverse examples of good work

• Give students flexibility for demonstrations of mastery (follow principles of UDL)

• Keep accessibility in mind

• Give timely, constructive and prompt feedback

• Plan to assess your assessment

APPLY to your course

Review & Reflect

Review your learning objectives and assessments, asking yourself:

• Do they align?

• Do your current assessments utilize the most appropriate methods for evaluating the achievement of the particular learning goals?

• Are they accessible?

• Do they utilize principles of Universal Design for Learning?

Do you have variety in assessment approaches (i.e. are student given the opportunity to demonstrate their skills/knowledge in multiple ways?)

Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to determine an assessment method

Regardless of whether your reason for assessing is diagnostic, formative or summative, Bloom’s Taxonomy can help you determine which type of assessment approach and tool you should use – especially if you first use the taxonomy to develop your learning objectives. By first identifying which skills you are hoping for students to achieve through a learning unit, you can choose the most appropriate assessment.

The chart below matches various assessment methods and tools with the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. As the chart moves from lower to higher order skills, the assessments also develop in sophistication and complexity. For example, if a learning objective is for students to be able to state or list basic facts about the subject matter, then a multiple-choice quiz is appropriate. However, if a learning objective is for students to be to formulate arguments/ideas and support those, then projects, presentations, and essays are more appropriate. Ideally, learners will be given several opportunities to develop higher order thinking skills, as well as a variety of assessment methods to demonstrate their mastery of their new skills and knowledge.

Use the course planner

The online course planner helps you build the components (objectives, assessments, instructional activities, etc.). If you have not done so already, complete the learning objectives section of the course planner. The assessments you choose should allow students to demonstrate their mastery of the objectives. Writing down all of the major (high-stakes) and minor (low-stakes) assessments in the course can help you ensure that there is a variety of assessment types and options for learners.

References & Resources

Armstrong, P. (n.d.). “Bloom’s Taxonomy.” Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.                                   

Bloom, B. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Vol. 1: Cognitive Domain. New York: McKay, 20, 24.

O'Keefe, L., Rafferty, J., Gunder, A., & Vignare, K. (2020). Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19: Faculty Playbook. Online Learning Consortium.                                   

Theall, M. and Franklin J.L. (2010). Assessing Teaching Practices and Effectiveness for Formative Purposes. In: A Guide to Faculty Development. KJ Gillespie and DL Robertson (Eds). Jossey Bass: San Francisco, CA.

Trumbull, E., & Lash, A. (2013). Understanding formative assessment: Insights from learning theory and measurement theory. San Francisco: WestEd.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.