Assessment, An Important Concept

Evaluating student performance is conceptually the same regardless of the medium through which it is accomplished. The focus of this website is education in the "online" arena; however, let's look at a frequently overlooked tenet of Instructional Design as it pertains to assessment in general.

The instructional design process (Instructional Design, 2nd Edition. Smith & Ragan. 1999) holds that instruction is developed in a certain order for some very well researched reasons.

• First, where are we going?
  • Here the goals of the instruction are determined.
  • What is the purpose of the course?
  • What are the desired Student Learning Outcomes (SLO)?
  • In other words, what should the student be able to do once he/she has completed the course?
  
  
  
• Second, how will we get there?
  • Here we should give thought to the medium of instruction (traditional classroom, traditional classroom blended with online resources, fully online instruction, etc.).
  • Different strategies apply to increase success in each medium; however, there are also many similarities. For example, enhancing student engagement is key to success in any instructional medium.
  
  
  
• Third, how will we know that we've arrived?
  • At this point we develop assessment!
  • It is critical that once we know where we are going with the course, and once we have given serious consideration to how we'll get there, we must turn our attention to how we, as instructors, will validate that the student has achieved the desired SLOs .

Well, you may ask, "isn't this just developing a test and teaching to it?" Excellent question and the answer is, no. We are not teaching to the test, we are teaching to the "SLOs," developed in step one above. It is from the SLOs that we determine the assessments and activities the student is to perform to validate that he/she has achieved the desired SLO. So, while it is rarely done, and seems a little odd, it is true that assessment is properly developed before content.

What does all this mean?

An effective assessment strategy is one that is directly linked to the SLOs stated in your syllabus. The Online Assessment segment of the ATC website will explore strategies to increase the validity of your assessments and increase your test security. Consider that SLOs essentially dictate the type of assessment that should be used. Therefore, an SLO such as, "Students will be able to explain the process of photosynthesis." is not properly assessed with "selection" assessment questions (i.e., True/False, Matching, Multiple-Choice).

Check out the next topic in the menu to the left, under "Online Assessment."

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your teaching and assessment activities.

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If you have any questions about online assessment, please feel free to contact John Crane (jcrane@uwf.edu, 473-7239).

Have a great day!