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| Photo by Jason Roswell on unsplash |
Assessment is the measurement of learning; One definition suggests that assessment is 'the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.' It is often characterised as 'testing' to provide a grade, but this would be a restricted view of assessment. Assessment comes in a variety of forms, and has many objectives beyond grading, including the provision of feedback to students, mapping of their progress, offers insight into differentiation for individual differences among students, and allows teachers to gain feedback on the effectiveness of their own pedagogical methods, resources, activities and environments.
The most important principle of any online learning programme is involvement. Australian Outback schools discovered this many years ago, when the only technology available to reach geographically remote children was radio. Schools of the Air functioned not only on transmission format but also on two-way radio to encourage interaction between students and their teachers. Success was based on giving students a voice.
In contemporary web based education, presenting online learners with multiple choice questions to check their understanding is a low-level form of assessment. It is commonly built into online learning environments simply because it is relatively easy to do. But most LMS platforms have more options. Giving them a quiz or a matching task can be more engaging. Asking them to post their work to a forum which can be viewed and evaluated by the entire peer group is more engaging still, which brings us to a key principle of online assessment:
Perhaps the most engaging approach to e-assessment (as it has come to be known) is to involve students as partners in the process. This would require elements of self- and peer-assessment as additional components to the teacher's assessment. Involving students in this manner not only gives them a voice in the assessment process, but also engages them in thinking about what is being assessed and how they can meet the assessment criteria.
Self- and peer-assessment has enjoyed success in adult forms of online education, but may be more problematic for school children who are not in direct contact with teachers and their peer group. Fontanillas et al (2016) write that assessment of online learners should be continuous and participatory, and that distance students value both individual and group forms of feedback. They argue that 'peer assessment becomes an incentive in order to improve the work of the group and individual efforts and the involvement of students increases when teacher shares the responsibility of the assessment with the students.' (Fontanillas et al, 2016).
Active involvement of online learners is clearly an important element for the success of any online learning programme. For children, especially younger students, it is essential to maintain attention and obviate behaviour management issues. All activities, including assessment need to be consistently engaging, so that children are captivated by their experience and maintain their focus.
What are your experiences and views in this area? Your contributions as ever, are welcome in the comments box below:
Reference
Fontanillas, T. R., Carbonell, M. R. and Guitert, M. (2016) E-Assessment Process: Giving A Voice to Online Learners. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. 13, 20.
Online assessment by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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