Online assessments become more and more popular not only among distance learning institutions but also among blended and traditional schools. However, when it comes to the online environment, it seems that multiple choice tests are used by the majority of distance learning programs…
Don’t get me wrong. I think that multiple choice tests can be a great tool if you want to measure students’ knowledge of facts, figures, or some concrete information. There are also some advantages for creating multiple choice exams:
- they are relatively simple to put together (if done incorrectly:-) ) ,
- they provide immediate feedback,
- they can be randomized to prevent plagiarism and cheating
- they can even be adapted to your students’ particular level
However, these tests also have numerous limitations :
- it is extremely hard to design reliable tests and develop test items
- they can be very ambiguous and tricky, and often set students up for a failure
- they are really not effective at measuring higher order critical skills
Digital worlds offer great opportunities for development of more sophisticated measures of assessment of learner’s knowledge and skills. Wikis, podcasts, interactive voice threads, e-portfolios, games and simulations, performance and product-based learning ,and many others have the potential to build more interactivity, engagement, collaboration, and autonomy; and they can be much more enjoyable to our learners.
With these new types of assessments, online students can be offered the opportunity to learn about a topic or explore a question, but in their own unique manner. They can utilize the learning and problem-solving skills they already have and develop new abilities that will help them achieve real-life goals.
The learner(s) are not finding an answer to something that the teacher already “knows”; rather, it is assumed that the learner or learners might well find information that the teacher doesn’t know about, in which the teacher will be interested for their own learning experience as a participant in the learning process. After drawing from a variety of media, the project will present, discuss, and conclude upon various perspectives on a topic, each of them validated by being supported by peer-reviewed literature or literature from reliable sources of information. The perspectives might not be those shared by the teacher; what is important is that they should be supported by references from the literature in order to qualify as valid.
Certainly there are some challenges that come with such new assessments:
- The teachers need to re-consider their own role.. we are no longer knowledge givers.
- There is no longer one right answer, there actually can be an unlimited ways to reach the problem,
- The process of learning is as important as the product
- Designing such activities can be a challenge, and developing the ways to measure learner success on these types of assessments is not as easy as creation of true-or false test items.
Rubrics for assessments online can be one way to help measure learner’s success on such activities. In my search for sample rubrics for assessments online that can be used for these new types of assessments I found a professional development page of the website of the University of Wisconsin-Stout. These amazing resources are from there. Enjoy!
Rubrics for assessments online:
Wiki Rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/wikirubric.html
Blog Rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/blogrubric.html
Twitter Rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/Twitter_Rubric.html
Online Discussion Rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/discussionrubric.html
Power Point and Podcast Rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/pptrubric.html
E-Portfolio: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/eportfoliorubric.html
Web Project Rubric: http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/upload/rubric6.pdf
Virtual Simulations and Games Rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/gamerubric.html
Self-assessment and peer feedback: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/inspirationrubric.html
Video Project Rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/videorubric.html
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Creating your own rubric: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/
This is a nice site that allows you to create rubrics for different subjects and even make them interactive!
Here is a handy rubric template that you can customize for your training or your class when you are in a hurry: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/triton/july/rubrics/Rubric_Template.html
Plug in your info and get a rubric made for you. Also browse through more than 500 premade rubrics:
http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/
WHAT TO DO NOW:
In the comments below please share your source of rubrics for assessments online.
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If you liked this article you may also like:
http://effectiveonlineteaching.org/2012/01/10/7-tools-for-creating-a-killer-online-presentation/
Maria,
Alternative style assessments can be tricky to properly assess. Collaborative exercises in particular have the problem of how one assesses the individual’s learning of the subject matter (assuming the subject matter is other than to work in a collaborative setting). Most rubrics I have seen either focus on explaining the assessment or on evaluating the final product. One really needs both to adequately determine the depth of learning. Your thoughts?
Bob,
This is an excellent point! I totally agree with you and think that we need both. Do you have a good examples of such rubrics?
Clearly outlined rubrics are a must have. Without them facilitators/teachers will not be able to explain why one student received one grade and another a higher grade. It’s a matter of maintaining integrity and trust as the person in authority.
I totally agree, Jan. I also think it helps guide students throgh the project. If they know HOW they will be graded, they will know which parts of the assignment to really concentrate on.
Whether it be an online or f2f course assignment, rubics are helpful to both students and myself. For myself, when marking, it makes it possible to quickly and fairly grade each assignment.
Jan, I agree! When I develop rubrics it seems like forever, but then they save so much time and keep me objective. Totally worth it!
Marina,
Thanks for the useful links to online resources. Our learning community offers two, free e-learning programs entitled: “Technology for School Leaders” and “Alternative Assessment for the Classroom.” Both use rubrics extensively to assess the products and performances expected of the participants to measure their progress and results. These programs have been used in graduate classes and blended professional development sessions. Moreover, our community offers an integrated social media and PD tool known as TaskBuilderOnline to develop and share teaching tasks such as the following that include rubric templates and tools to create them:
1. Plan standards-based units and lessons
2. Construct formative and summative assessments
3. Align standards, instruction or training, and assessment
4. Teach a skill, concept, process, or principle
5. Integrate graphic organizers
6. Differentiate instruction, training, and assessment
7. Evaluate learner performances with scoring tools such as rubrics
8. Analyze learner performance data and act on results
9. Clone and WikiTask lessons and other teaching tasks to colleagues
10. Communicate with colleagues and teams
I invite you and your colleagues to join our learning community and adapt the programs and tools to meet your needs and goals. Once you join the learning community, the free integrated social media and PD tools are located in the tool box on your homepage:
http://www.learningfront.com
I hope this information is helpful in your quest to locate relevant resources.
Nick
This is an outstanding resource, Nick. Thanks so much for sharing this with our readers!
Marina, I have always come back to Kathy Schrock’s work when needing additional rubric ideas –
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/assess.html
Thank you for your post -
Carl
Carl,
Thanks so much. I did not know of this resource. Very nicely done. I will share it with my colleagues as well.
May I pose that the need for specific instructions work hand-in-hand with rubrics as a team. They can create a system for a clear and fair learning experience (i.e. an assignment). Otherwise, rubics can be misleading.
Great insight, as alaways, Jan. There is just so much to take into account when it comes to rubrics…
Marina,
I have written many assessments in my teaching career in public school. You can make a multiple choice test into a critical thinking test by asking the right questions. If you have ever used Costa’s Level of Questioning, you will find that using the Level 3 prompts with the right wording will give you that higher level thinking question and answer that is needed for that critical thinking test question.
In order for the question to be relevant, it must come from the curriculum map content; however, you should not have a critical thinking question on all content, only the content that your students are expected to know in depth information.
Another great way to test students is through Proficiency Learning Model. This practice is more widely used and I think will also be the common practice in the next few years. You can check this out at http://www.marzanoresearch.com/site/default.aspx
As for rubrics, I utilize them in my Academic Coaching program at http://www.studentsuccess101.me I have my coaching students write reflections on their work and their progress and use a rubric to grade their reflection. When students use them often they get into the habit of writing, reading and creating better work.
Lynn,
This is outstanding. Thanks so much for sharing these resources.
I’ve recently been following a discussion on the assessment of short film productions and was alerted to the following which looks rather interesting. Jason Ohler has some nice (and free) resources for both supporting and assessing this sort of thing – http://www.jasonohler.com/ – if you click on Digital Storytelling, Part 4 of that section looks at assessment and has some good suggestions on rubric considerations.
Jacqui, Thanks so much for so generously sharing your knowledge. It is always nice to see what people in other industries are doing. Thanks for introducing Jason Ohler’s resoures!
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My feeling is that some rubrics, such as some promoted in Ontario’s secondary curriculum, are weak and subject to interpretation.
These basically have performance levels of 0 to 4 and are worded indistinguishably except (often) for a modifier, for example, {never, rarely, sometimes, usually, always}. Of greater value are rubrics that provide more meaningful discriminators.This requires more work (and a greater relational understanding of what is being assessed/evaluated) and insights into what the desired product or process attributes are.
Thoughts?
Great point, Peter~ I agree that we need to provide distinctions beyond one word among different performance levels.
One thing that we need to be aware of as education moves online is that every interaction students make with online environments can be tracked and this opens new possibilities for assessment. I’ve attached a link to a paper I’ve written in which I use data obtained from the online environment (data mining) to assess for growth and development of the online community.
If we are using entirely new assessment techniques, then of course we would need new assessment rubrics.
Link
Knowledge Building: Reinventing Education for the Knowledge Age
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ies/article/view/12884
Abstract:
This paper examines the Knowledge Age and how economic factors are causing educators to rethink and reinvent education. Two key factors in education in the Knowledge Age will be education for an economy of innovation, and the increasing virtualization of education.
We present knowledge building pedagogy as a model for education in the Knowledge Age and discuss Knowledge Forum, online knowledge building environment designed to facilitate and support the knowledge building process.
Built into Knowledge Forum is a suit of online tools that track the interactions that students have with Knowledge Forum. We focus on the social network tool that allows us to examine communication patterns among the students when working online.
Using the data obtained, we examine the growth and development of online community formation during the first week of class for a group of naïve users in a third-year university class. Examining the note reading and response networks, we see that the note reading network develops more rapidly than the responding network, and that it is more symmetric than the responding network. However, by mid-term, a highly connected network has developed for both note-reading and responding.
Thank you so much for such geneous information, Don! Your article is invaluable. I am sure many readers will find your post very interetsing and inspiring.
I don’t see that going online necessarily changes assessment because you haven’t changed the subject matter you are teaching. That said, computers enable us to more easily crunch numbers so we can effortlessly identify negative discriminators and perform other sophisticated statistical functions but that’s independent of being connected to a network. Rubrics ought to measure mastery of subject matter not the media on which we communicate.
Communications is what distinguishes computers from calculators. Its interesting that so many e-Teachers rely so heavily on multiple-choice questions. I prefer essay questions because they show more about what students do and do not know. Yes, it does require more work but sometimes they reveal the genius hiding in your course!
Chickering & Gamson identified student/faculty interaction as one of seven principles for good practice. We now know that connecting with people on campus, brick-and-mortar or virtual, is one of the key factors to academic success. Why not interact through your assessment process?
Dear Mark,
I agree. I was not trying to state that online rubrics are different. However, the assessments are often different. Therefore, I provided a valuable tool for those who try to develop assessments. Thanks so much for sharing additional resources. They are very useful!
Thank you, Marina, for collecting these resources and putting them in one place. This post will come in handy for our faculty members, who have been inquiring about precisely these types of rubrics.
Christopher,
You are so very welcome. Please suggest some topics that you are interested in and I will cover them in my future blogs!
While I try to stay away from ‘cookie cutter’ evaluations of students and people, I used three category sets to determine essay grade: Presentation, Content, and Support. Presentation generally represents grammar and writing (how you said it), Content represented the extent to which a student addressed the question that was asked (what you said), and Support (obviously?) corresponded to whether the student supported their statements (MLA/APA documentation also fell here). A-level work would need to excell in all categories, while a student who was a second-language learner could still pass if their ideas and research were strong, giving them time (and motivation) to improve the one area where they were weak. Students who were strong writers but lazy/not following directions would likewise not receive A grades for less than A-level work. This also facilitated discussion with students who were curious about “why I got a B/C/D/F.” It provides a starting point for them to understand what is expected of their work.
It’s also easy to double the value of one category for a particular assignment where I want to stress, for example research or grammar.
Carlos,
This is so generous of you. Thanks so much for sharing your ideas. This is invaluable.
Marina, check out http://www.nald.ca/library/learning/btg/ed/edmain/edindex.htm#tools and scroll down to the last section called Evaluation Tools. You’ll find rubrics for several types of activities. Hope this link is helpful for you.
Thank you so much. LuAnne for these invaluable resources!
Rubrics should be program specific and then course detailed per assignment. I cannot stress the importance of global decisions on rubrics and making sure all instructors are trained how to effectively and consistently use rubrics. This assures the quality of the education and the consistency of what students are being taught.
This is so totally true, Christine. I agree that there is no one-size-fits-all rubric! We need to develop a general template that can be customizable for each particular scenario. Thanks for your input!
Maria (and others),
Yes rubrics have great potential to improve the consistency, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness of assessment for both the teacher and the student. But sometimes the mechanics of using a rubric overwhelms our educational ideals.
I created a tool that fits into any version of Word, to allow creation of automated eRubrics which record, rescale, and total the marks and then convert the mark to a grade. You can videos of using and creating the eRubrics at: http://www.emarkingassistant.com/emarking_demos.htm
There is a 30 day trial (reusable comments and eRubric which works on Windows) or a free version version (eRubrics only which works on Win or Mac).
Keep up the excellent blog and I wish everyone the best in their teaching.
Peter Evans
http://eMarkingAssistant.com
info@eMarkingAssistant.com
Peter,
I checked your link- it is a very useful resource. Thanks so much for sharing with everyone!
Hi there! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be ok. I’m
absolutely enjoying your blog and look forward to new updates.
Thanks for the comment. Sure I do. @mkostina Have a great day