There are a few options when considering how you will assess in eLearning. I’ve outlined some of those options, and the benefits and disadvantages of each.

1. Tracking. Most course management systems will have some sort of tracking capabilities. Either that, or you can install Google Analytics, or another anylitics program onto it. This type of assessment is usually used as a way of  monitoring a student’s interaction with the learning materials. A disadvantage of this is that it is easily manipulated- once students know that this is part of the assessment, they can either just sit there and click on different sections while they read a magazine, or they can pay a sibling to sit there and click around.

If you do want to see how your students have engaged with all the course materials, then it might be an idea to request a reflection of the materials for them. The number of words should be relevant to the age and skill level of our students.

2. Online quizzes/ exams/ tests. They’re all the same thing, and they can all be done well, and not so well. I have recently had a rather negative experience to do with online exams, which I will share with you soon. For an online quiz to be done well, students must receive FEEDBACK! This is important, because otherwise your students will be unsure of where they have made their mistakes, and be unable to establish a correct answer.

When allowing students to do an online exam, you must assume that this is now an open book exams. With miracles like spotlight on macs, and just google in general, you can be sure that this more then one way that your student can find the information they’re after. Not just in the text book on their lap.

It is my personal belief that assessment should be open-book (article on this to come), and I therefore encourage my students to use the knowledge that they have to create more knowledge, even while they’re doing their exam.

3. Contribution Observations. This is probably THE most time consuming form of assessment. To browse through your online course forums, or wikis, to extablish what people have written has got to be painful.

A sensible way around this is to get students to submit all their forum responses in one paper (this is best done with a synopsis of what happened previously in the discussion, and after the student’s input). If students have editing a wiki page, or something similar, then they should include a quote from the page, and also an explanation of why they wrote what they did, and how they influenced the learning environment of the wiki.

4. Assignments. The age old form of assessment, which can still be used in online learning. It is my recommendation that students submit PDF files to you (via a dropbox, or email), so that they can be sure that their work is not tampered with. You may like to either use a program like Adobe Acrobat Professional to edit the pdfs with your comments and corrections, or you could simply print them out, and then scan them back to students (highlighter doesn’t scan well).

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