Assessments

Online quizzes and exams need not differ significantly from those you might offer in a residential setting, though there are some additional factors to consider.

Recurring weekly quizzes can be an excellent way to track student progress—both for you and for your students.

• Even if your course does not typically use them, consider designing short quizzes that use "automatically-validated" question types such as multiple choice, matching, short-answer, and numerical, all of which are available in the Digital Campus. Students can get immediate feedback on their performance without adding to your weekly grading burden, prompting them to review asynchronous material or ask more informed questions in live session.

• Quizzes need not be graded, and can be set to permit multiple attempts, encouraging a growth mindset that further empowers students to view them as a learning tool rather than an achievement metric.

Higher-stakes exams such as midterms and finals can raise questions about timing and academic integrity in the online setting.

• Timed exams can disadvantage students with connectivity issues or alternate testing needs, so if your course must include a timed exam, consider inflating your usual time limit to correct for this.

• Where possible, include open-ended questions that require students to think critically and expose their thought processes. This will make it harder to share answers (and easier to spot when answers have been shared).

Most papers and projects translate well to the online setting with minimal modification.

When students are completing complex assignments such as papers and projects in a hybrid setting, clear expectations-setting and file organization take on new importance. Consider the following tips for online papers and projects.

• Most projects and papers will benefit from a grading rubric that lays out specific criteria for success. If you haven't used rubrics before in your teaching, now is a great time to start: not only can they help expedite your grading process, they can be a powerful tool for helping to set student expectations and fend off unnecessary questions as students begin work.

• Consider introducing peer evaluation into your paper or project scaffolding, if it doesn't exist already. In the absence of a physically-shared classroom, structured opportunities for students in your class to engage with one another around materials related to the course can offer a powerful form of social learning. Pair students up to review drafts or abstracts, or place them in small discussion groups in live session to compare notes as they embark on individual projects. Be sure to provide instruction on how to review each others' work and provide constructive feedback—giving good feedback is a skill that students will need to learn.

• If your course uses group projects, consider how you'll try to assess whether each student has contributed equally: you might introduce a peer rating metric or some other mechanism—such as asking students to work collaboratively in small breakout groups during live sessions when you can circulate and check in on their work—to assess individual contributions.

• As students submit project or paper files, you might suggest that a specific naming convention is followed, so that student names and IDs can be tracked according to time and date of submission.

Digital learning opens up the opportunity for student to practice new skills in delivering virtual presentations: an increasingly valuable 21st-century proposition.

End-of-term presentations are a common assessment tactic in many courses, giving students the chance to sum up, apply, and share the knowledge and skills they've built in your course to a specific domain. Most best practices for assessing presentations—allowing learner choice and flexibility, setting clear format and time expectations, allowing class Q&A where possible, being clear about which deliverables must be turned in as part of the grade—apply equally well in the online format. Some tips specific to the digital classroom include:

• Use time wisely: For many courses, presentations are best conducted during the live session, since this can allow for instructor and peer Q&A. However, if time is short, you might consider asking students to record and share short presentations asynchronously. Students can watch their peers' presentations on their own time, and focus live session time on feedback and questions.

• Try to forestall technical issues: Ask students to share presentation materials with you in advance of their presentation. For group presentations, suggest that all members of the group have a copy of all materials saved in case of technical issues with the selected presenter. Ask students to have any visual materials associated with their presentation loaded and ready to go as soon as it's their turn to limit wasted time in transitioning between students or teams.

• Use rubrics to set clear expectations: Presentations are another complex assessment format that benefits from transparency around how students will be assessed. What portion of their grade depends on the knowledge and skills represented in the presentation? How much on their application to a particular topic or challenge? How much on the mechanics of professional presentation skills, such as organization, clarity, and confidence?

Assessing participation in online learning can be a practice that relies on more sources of evidence than residential assessment, as long as it is thoughtfully designed.

In a residential setting, students' participation grade might measure the quantity and quality of contributions to lecture and discussion settings, or it might integrate additional metrics such as completion of weekly reading checks or ungraded quizzes. In a hybrid learning setting, we recommend assessing both asynchronous and synchronous participation to get the fullest picture of student engagement.

• Measure asynchronous participation by tracking student completion of ungraded asynchronous materials and activities such as discussion boards or ungraded quizzes. The opportunity to earn participation points asynchronously benefits students who tend to be quieter in live discussion settings: those whose first language may not be the language of instruction, those with different learning needs or different degrees of technical access, and so on. Just as in a residential course, you may choose to assess either the quantity of participation, the quality of contributions, or both.

  • If you choose to measure things like discussion board contributions as part of students' overall participation grade, we recommend making this an aggregate, quality-based assessment, so that students are incentivized to engage thoughtfully rather than to pump discussion boards full of low-quality comments. For more, see the section on designing effective discussion boards under Asynchronous Instruction.

• Measure synchronous participation by measuring student attendance and engagement in any live sessions your course might include. Keep accessibility front-of-mind: students with visual or auditory impairments may struggle more with digitally-mediated class discussions, and students experiencing bandwidth issues or noisy backgrounds as they connect may struggle to contribute at a high level. As above, you may choose to assess either the quantity of participation, the quality of contributions, or both.