Best Practices & What Works in Online Learning

Assessments

Renee Welch & Karin RiggsExternal 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”.

http://www.wccnet.edu/departments/curriculum/assessment.php?levelone=gradeseval

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”.

http://www.wccnet.edu/departments/curriculum/assessment.php?levelone=gradeseval

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

http://vudat.msu.edu/assess-perform

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 ObjectivesGrading Criteria

Explanation of participationCalendar 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

• http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/itl/respondus.html• 2 great choices to increase your assessment options.• Both work essentially the same way: download them for

free at: http://e-sales.accc.uic.edu 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 browser3. Paste into the top field in the Respondus wizard… THEN4. In your browser go to the course you want to use, 5. go the to the "control panel" page and copy the address6. Paste into the second field in the Respondus wizard… THEN7. Press extract...

Field #1=The BB log in pageAddress…

Field #2= The control panel pageAddress…

Press EXTRACT

Other Blackboard features…

• Grading

• Rubrics

• Gradebook

• Cheating

• Safe Assignment

• ePortfolios

For more information contact:

Renee Welch, Ph.D.rwelch1@uic.edu

312.355.1767

Karin RiggsKriggs@uic.edu312.996.5085

www.externaledu.uic.edu