Friday, April 24, 2009
On-line assessment - positive or negative?
Have been thinking a bit ahead of myself - have to re-write an anatomy and physiology assessment for our Level 3 anatomy and physiology module - and I am wondering whether I can incoporate this into my final project for this course? I discovered this website that raises some interesting points about on-line assessment and flexibility of courses. See what you think!
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Helen yes the re-development of an assessment can certainly be incorporated into your plan for the course. The article is very interesting though I find it does take a slightly negative, or is it critical, look at online assessment.
ReplyDeleteI would like to say that a lot of the considerations are very real. We cannot just make the assumption that everyone will be abl eto take part in an online role play or practice the wonderful online quizzes we took hours to prepare.
Though the latter has been successful in lots of subjects where mastery learning is an important part of getting facts firmly lodged in students' brains through cognitive processing.
Regarding the item in Table 1: Objectives, modes and learner characteristics of on-line learning(objective) - A body of knowledge (mode)- An on-line exam (learner characteristics)- The likelihood of cheating.
People do worry far too much about cheating I feel. In my opinion, if the questions are written well, that is, they require the students to think and problem-solve rather than rote learn answers, then it does not matter. Only the people who have put in the study will be able to work out the answers even in an open book situation.
Personally and in my experience - deeper forms of learning can have assessment built in, e.g. the blogs that you are all keepng for this course and are best not tacked on to the end of a course. Relevance is key to secure engagement don't you think? At any level.
Absolutely - relevance is so important - whether it is relevance to the course they are studying or to their own personal beliefs and ideas - this can be the make or break between the student understanding and engaging or not.
ReplyDeleteYes - I did think the article had a bit of a negative slant towards online assessment - but still an interesting read for us non on-line assessors!