Successful educational institutions in the future will out of necessity integrate the worlds of education, work, and leisure with leading edge electronic technologies as they become available. The new model for educational activity will be that which is delivered by the institutions and acquired by the students in an anytime, anyplace, on-demand fashion. The educational institution of the future, at the post-secondary level at least, will not be a campus we drive through and view the ivy covered halls of wisdom, but it will be a learning experience we participate in while we drive along the highway, relax at home, work at our desks, fly to distant locations, collaborate with fellow learners, and accomplish all the other tasks required of us to be productive, useful, and educated citizens of the world. It will always be at our fingertips, or at least no more than a click away. One of the major challenges of this new “at-our-fingertips” learning environment is how to assess learner achievement in an online course in which learner and instructor seldom or never see each other in face-to-face contact. The assessment must be authentic as defined by Wiggins (1998), Bridges (1995) and others and must be effective in that it measures learning, engages the learner, is integrated into the learning process, and promotes further learning. The assessment paradigm developed as a result of this study will be a step forward. (Drummond, 2003)
References:
Cheng, A., Jordan, M. and Schallert, D. (2013). Reconsidering assessment in online/hybrid courses: Knowing versus learning. Computers & Education, [online] 68, pp.51-59. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.04.022 [Accessed 13 Feb. 2018].
Kerton, C. and Cervato, C. (2014). Assessment in Online Learning--It's a Matter of Time. Journal of College Science Teaching, [online] 043(04). Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/43632008 [Accessed 12 Feb. 2018].
Module 4: Design (P2: Assessment). (2018).
Watson, C., Wilson, A., Drew, V. and Thompson, T. (2016). Small data, online learning and assessment practices in higher education: a case study of failure?. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, [online] 42(7), pp.1030-1045. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2016.1223834 [Accessed 12 Feb. 2018].
Thank you for your post, Leslie. I appreciate you pointing out that students tend not to take traditional assessments seriously in the online modality when they do not count for a significant portion of the final grade. In my experience teaching mathematics online, students take assessments seriously when they count for a large part of the final grade and are taken in a proctored environment. We need to do a better job as online instructors in both designing online assessments and proctoring them. Thank you for making us aware of this important issue in online education.
ReplyDeleteExcellent research for this week Leslie! I agree with you that online learning is definitely up to the student on how much they are putting in and will correlate with how much they get out. More thought needs to be put in by online instructors on how to properly assess these students. And it needs to be done in a way that they don't necessarily know they are being proctored. Instructors really need to do research themselves on this topic, but also in creating a lesson plan that is going to continually keep the online student engaged so that they are required to but in effort. Great blog this week!
ReplyDeleteI wish I had thought to include the quote with my post. I quoted my sources, but it is a great idea to include the original quote for those not in class. Also, I totally agree with you get out of the course what you put in. The authentic assessments like the blogs and the course-long projects do give me deeper understanding than those traditional quizzes where I was looking for answers in what I read and panicked over a clock that would run out. We would do well to remember that in our future endeavors to provide effective online education.
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