229 Assessment (4.22.2020)

For the final Virtual Lab of the semester, we returned to the concerns around assessment in the digital age. Participants raised questions of academic integrity, exam design, and how to manage times when technology fails during the exam. Moderators and participants shared their experiences with Examity, an online proctoring software.

5 Tips

1. Assign asynchronous qualitative assessments instead of synchronous high-stakes exams so students can apply learning in ways that more meaningfully connect content to their lives. Consider, for example: short answers or essays, projects, case studies, presentations, discussions, and reflective activities.
2. Vary assessments. Use multiple means of online classroom assessment strategies to assess students’ prior knowledge and gauge their comprehension and progress. Provide frequent low-stakes quizzing with immediate question feedback.
3. Create secure and accessible quizzes. Canvas Quizzes offers shuffled questions and answers, allows multiple attempts to promote student learning, can give immediate feedback to their answers, and allows restrictions (Caution: restrict carefully!).
4. Assume students do not intend to “cheat” but may not understand your expectations and what can and cannot be used in a testing environment or what is considered as plagiarism. Provide clear academic integrity policies and clearly explain your expectations.  Also consider using Turnitin to help students learn proper source attribution.
5. Be clear and transparent. Share rubrics so students understand what is expected. Involve them by utilizing peer review to develop key skills such as describing, assessing, criticizing, analyzing — and to improve assignments before you review  — saving time and providing the ability to focus on higher-level feedback.

Review this session’s activity sheet here. Join our Canvas course and follow the instructions at canvas.wisc.edu/enroll/GPT8NL. Find info from past Labs at bit.ly/ATL-ejournal