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Educator's Voice

Vol 10, Issue 1
January 22, 2008

Assessment at a Higher Level: An Instructor Perspective

(Part 1 of 2 Articles on Assessment)

A lot is going on in the world of assessment these days, and many of the changes that are taking place are being forwarded by the increasing reach of online education in the education marketplace. The prevalence of online teaching and learning are forcing schools and instructors to reassess assessment by asking these beginning questions: Are assessment methods in the physical classroom appropriate for the online classroom? Is there a way to align assessment in the physical classroom with assessment in the online classroom? How do we know we are assessing the right things in either mode of delivery? Are our assessment methods preparing our students for the workplace?

Essentially, all of these questions together recognize the mission in which teacher and student collude. When teaching and assessing, learning and demonstrating learning, teachers and students can no longer narrowly focus on transferring a subject matter, they must also widely focus on graduating students who are ready for today’s workplace demands.

The idea of readying students for future careers has long been a mantra for institutions, but it gets somewhat of a “not in my backyard” response from some instructors who feel that their subject matter is a separate entity from the day-to-day life students will face in the workplace. The truth is, as assessment matters stand in many classrooms, the instructors are probably right. To promote true educational preparation, schools should not aim for readiness as defined by the government’s current directives to the public school systems, which are often echoed in traditional undergraduate teaching methods. Readiness today is defined, by both the government and many schools, as a student who performs well in an assessment environment that does not exist in the workplace.

Today’s students need, and will demand, an ongoing and thorough educational preparation that leaves them familiar with and therefore, less daunted by, the performance requirements they will encounter on the job. It is one thing to graduate students who know a subject area, or even a breadth of subject areas as promoted by the traditional university system’s requirement of a renaissance-style sampling of subject matter across the humanities, natural and social sciences curriculum. It is quite another thing to graduate students who can do something with this knowledge. This ability is the product of practice. Every class a student takes should contain learning and assessment activities that promote the necessary skills for being successful members of a workplace team in a workplace environment.

Aligning assessment with workplace activities is good for the students; it’s also good for schools and instructors. Students who segue smoothly into the working world upon graduation are going to appreciate the thoroughness of their preparation and they will send others to the school for the same educational preparation. The esoteric may find the idea of education as a business to be crass, but the practical define repeat students and word-of-mouth advertising as important for job security.

Online Assessment: Instructor Fears and Corresponding Strategies

For instructors who rely on traditional objective assessment (such as multiple choice, true/false and matching), delivering these assessments online brings with it the issue of how one knows the student did not cheat on the exam. The avenues for cheating that these instructors worry about include the following:

1. The student may consult the textbook or the Internet for answers to exam questions.
2. The students may consult each other while taking the test.
3. The student may not be the one actually taking the test.

The strategies many use to counter the first two fears are as follows:

1. If testing “recall/memorization” items such as definitions that could be found in the textbook or on the Internet, limit the amount of time the student has to take the test. If you are using selective response question types, the student isn’t doing any writing, so a student who knows the material will be able to quickly answer questions; the student who has not studied will have insufficient time to look these definitions up.
2. Randomize the order of the questions each student receives through the use of question pools. Most online software allows for the creation of question pools, which will display questions in a different order for each student. This makes consultation between students difficult as there is no common numbering to use to denote a specific question.
3. Using the question pool feature in your online software, choose to display fewer questions on the test than are in the actual pool. Not only will questions be randomized, but students will have different questions. The larger the pool of questions the test is drawing from, the more likely the students will have completely different tests and will, therefore, be unable to work with classmates when taking the test.
4. Do not allow the students to review the results of the test (beyond seeing their number or letter grade) until all students have taken the test. If this is not possible, create an alternate exam for students who miss the original testing dates.

Though very effective at combating cheating when combined, the strategies above are really “band-aids” aimed at propping up objective assessment of lower-level, building-block concepts when this kind of testing culminates in a major portion of the final grade. Essentially, making these tests an appreciable portion of a student’s grade encourages cheating at assessment time and also results in a cycle of cram-style memorization of building-block concepts and facts, then a regurgitation of these through the testing mechanism and finally results in the students’ short term memory dump because these concepts and facts are being tested in an environment that is divorced from application. In short, objective testing doesn’t give the student a practical use for the definitions and concepts that were memorized. In this light, it’s a bit of a stretch to call this learning!

So back to our list—what could we do to immunize our assessment plans against another the third instructor fear, which is the possibility that the student might not be the one taking the test? The best way to guard against this is to get to know the student. The best way to get to know the student is to give the class assignments where writing is involved—discussion questions, journal entries and essays come to mind. This speaks to the idea of assessment as “authentic, ongoing, and integrated with classroom instruction (1),” rather than being the last activity undertaken before moving on to a new topic. Through student writing, you will have a very good idea of the student’s base knowledge, thought processes, research acumen and the amount of time the student is willing to put into the course (which we all know is a huge factor in learning, no matter what the student’s native academic abilities may be).

Implement a mastery learning strategy to test recall of building block concepts and definitions in a “safe,” non-punitive environment. Make these objective tests worth fewer points than you did before (remember, you have other artifacts to look at with the writing described above) and set the test up so that the student can take it repeatedly within a given time period until the highest possible score is achieved. This gives the student a tool to study by (especially if you use this test as a lecture vehicle by providing lots of commentary for each question that the student will see when reviewing the quiz) and puts the responsibility of memorization squarely on the student without creating an environment that encourages cheating.

Using both writing (formal and informal) and mastery learning formats for assessment will also ensure that students do a variety of activities. In some they will automatically perform well and we will know that we have succeeded in accommodating their particular learning style. Other activities they will not perform well and this is equally valuable because not every employee excels at every task at work; however, these tasks must still be performed. The areas in which the student needs help are your most valuable opening for interaction with that student (see discussion of this strategy at www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/litass/forms.html ).

Transition to Authentic Assessment

Combine what you’ve done above for your summative assessments—have students apply the concepts and definitions that they have practiced in the mastery quizzes as well as their writing and research skills to a product such as a paper, project, case study analysis, presentation or equation solving. Think about making at least one of your summative assessments a group project so that students bring each of their strengths to bear and learn to function as a member of a group. Though being a member of a group is natural to students in the elementary years, the competition created in high school and college can create individualists who have a very hard time working as part of a group. In most workplaces, however, group work is the foundation of most activities and processes and the ability to be a good team member is highly valued and rewarded. A good resource for further discussion of authentic assessment derived from acquired knowledge is Grant Wiggins 1990 article, “The Case for Authentic Assessment (2)."

Wiggins states that the “debate [about assessment] is not ‘either-or,’ there is virtue in an array of assessment instruments (1990).” The transition here is also not one of “out with the old and in with the new” so much as a recognition that, in today’s world, educators have to be very nimble in their assessment planning because the students have two equally primary needs. Students certainly must engage with and master the subject matter of any class they take. While doing this, they also need to gain and build upon practical experience that they can take to their jobs.

Sometimes the subject matter is part and parcel of this direct take-away, and sometimes it is not. Even if a subject matter can’t be said to relate directly to what a student plans to do professionally, an instructor can help students in the future by emulating workplace activities. A focused and well thought out discussion is similar to the workplace brainstorming sessions in which ideas are brought before a group and examined for application.

A writing assignment will help a student to understand process—using a rubric to describe expectations for this assignment will emulate a workplace project “kick-off” and using the same rubric to evaluate the assignment will model the end-stage assessment of how successful the project was in meeting a client’s or company’s goals. A presentation using audio or video will sharpen the student’s speaking skills—this could be turned into a debate to add the groupwork component.

Keep in mind that the construct of online learning is, in and of itself, a preparation for the workplace as students need to learn to learn online in order build skill sets and to stay current in many professions. They must be active learners and they must be able to self-organize and to recognize skill gaps in order to ask the right questions of their teachers and team leaders. A careful review and adjustment of our assessment techniques is key to setting students up for success—not only in the subject area in which we are experts but also in whatever students decide to do after they’ve left our classes and schools.

--Vicki Galloway Harsh, MA
Sr. Academic Training Consultant

1. Unknown, (1997). What are the different forms of authentic assessment. Retrieved December 17, 2008, from Eduplace Web site: http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/litass/forms.html

2. Wiggins, G (1990). The Case for Authentic Assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation,
13, Retrieved 12/15/08, from http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2

Instructor’s Tip:

Beyond Clip Art − Creating Instructional Tables

Presenting lecture style content items in an online course frequently involves paragraph after paragraph of plain text. Students often first scroll through a page to see how intense the reading will be and get discouraged before they begin to focus on the content. Effective instructional tables provide course authors with yet another tool to break content into more reader-friendly chunks which ultimately leads to improved comprehension.

Previous Instructor’s Tip and OnlineBlogucation entries have discussed various options for embedding relevant clip art, audio and video files into instructional content. Adding instructional tables to your repertoire allows you to highlight anything from a significant quote that provokes student reflection to bulleted or numbered lists. Read on for a novice’s guide on how to make minor adjustments to HTML code that will yield major benefits to the chunking and readability of online content that go beyond straight text.

Customization Tips Applicable to All Tables Below

1. Switch to the view in the eCollege text editor. Then copy and paste the code for the desired table style below into the editor. Authors can then edit the table in “<>” or “Design” view.

2. Replace yellow highlighted text below with appropriate verbiage for your course.

3. Change the color of table cells to match the look and feel of your course. View this extensive list of color names that you can choose from. Replace the text within quotes to change the color (bgcolor=”WhiteSmoke” or color="MidnightBlue") Note: Course authors with a more advanced html background can Google “web colors” for the 6 digit hex codes that can be prefaced with # as another option for more color choices (i.e. color=”#003366”).

Highlighted Quote with Author Line

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

– Malcolm Forbes

<p><table align="center" width="425" bgcolor="whitesmoke" border="0" cellpadding="15" cellspacing="0">
            <tr>
                        <td valign="top" width="432"><p><font color="darkslateblue">
                        
                        <strong><em>The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.</em><br><br>
                        
                        &#8211 Malcolm Forbes</strong></font></p>
                        </td>
            </tr>
</table>

Bulleted List with Title Line

Key questions

How do I add rows to my instructional table?
How do I change the background colors in my table?

To add additional list items copy and paste the code below to create a new line.

<li><font face="arial, verdana" color="midnightblue">Adding rows to my instructional table?</font></li>

<table align="center" width="425" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="papayawhip" border="0">
    <tr>
        <td valign="top" width="432">
                        
         <h2><font face="arial, verdana" color="midnightblue">Key questions</font></h2>
         <ul>
                                    
                                    <li><font face="arial, verdana" color="midnightblue">How do I add rows to my instructional table?</font></li>
                                    
                                    <li><font face="arial, verdana" color="midnightblue">How do I change the background colors in my table?</font></li>

</ul>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

Numbered List with Title Bar

Blooms Taxonomy

Knowledge

Comprehension

Application

Analysis

Synthesis

Evaluation

Copy and paste the following line to add another numbered item to your list:

<table align="center" width="425" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
            <tr>
        <td bgcolor="lightsteelblue" align="center">
                        
         <font face="Arial, Helvetica"><strong>Blooms Taxonomy</strong></font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td bgcolor="oldlace">
                                    <ol><font face="Arial, Helvetica">
                                    <li><p>Knowledge</p></li>
                                    <li><p>Comprehension</p></li>
                                    <li><p>Application</p></li>
                                    <li><p>Analysis</p></li>
                                    <li><p>Synthesis</p></li>
                                    <li><p>Evaluation</p></li>

</font></ol>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

While this code may look intimidating, it’s fairly straightforward once you get the hang of it and the pedagogical benefits will be well worth the effort. Good Luck and Good Teaching.

--Brian McKay-Epp, M.Ed.

Academic Trainer and Consultant