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Online Assessment
Uncharted Territory
3/1/2008
Are you choosing the right online assessment
products and getting the most out of the tools you
have? Online assessment is fraught with pitfalls, but
these savvy educators and technologists are meeting
the challenge-and then some.
There's certainly no shortage of online learning platforms out there today. Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Sakai, Moodle, Angel Learning, and Datatel (projected to be a CMS player in Q4 2008): You name the interface, and chances are that someone at your school has evaluated it at some point in the not-too-distant past. But investigating the value of the assessment components of these tools, now that's another story altogether. This exploration-essentially, the process of assessing online assessment-can be far more complicated. And while many higher education administrators trust their CMS vendors implicitly, a growing number are engaging in their own forms of metrics to gauge how well students are doing when they're educated or accessing education content online.
Some officials see this process as a critical part of online learning systems. Others see it as an act of calculating return on investment (ROI)-a way to see precisely how much bang they are getting for their buck. Ron Legon, executive director of Quality Matters, a program designed to certify the quality of online courses and online components, says that no matter how educators assess their online assessment tools, it's a critical part of performance evaluation overall (see "Setting the Standards"). (Quality Matters is run by MarylandOnline, a consortium that champions distance learning in Maryland and serves as a directory for Maryland schools involved in the online learning experience.)
"To offer online learning is one thing," says Legon. "To actively evaluate it to make sure it's doing its job, is something entirely different."
Selecting Rubrics and Metrics
Inherently, assessment tools or rubrics are nothing without metrics. In traditional classroom settings, most of these metrics take the form of test scores, compiled after a particular lesson (in the case of formative assessments) or a particular sequence of the curriculum (in the case of summative assessments). Other assessments consist of grades or rankings for things such as participation, homework, and attendance. This is nothing new.
Many of these same metrics exist in the world of online tools, as well-the media by which they are applied are just different. Instead of distributing a paper exam, for instance, a professor may have students respond to multiple-choice questions via a web browser. Instead of having students meet at the library for group homework assignments, a professor may require them to meet in an online collaboration environment.
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