Evaluation Strategies for Online Teaching

Personalizing Your Course

Each eCampus course is designed by Content Experts, or Subject Matter Experts, in the respective area of study. These professionals develop the courses along with instructional designers to efficiently deliver a successful learning experience for students. The courses are then approved by USG's Board of Regents. Even though the courses are pre-designed and loaded into the LMS for faculty, instructors have a degree of academic freedom in how the course is presented to the students. While you cannot remove content from the course and must teach it as designed, if the addition of certain materials would improve the learning experience for your students, you may add this material. If you believe a permanent change can be effective for all future offerings of that course, you may report this on the Change Form in SEADS.

There are multiple ways to personalize your course without compromising the integrity of the material already loaded into the course. This includes, as mentioned, the addition of materials. These additions can be pictures, videos, important infographics that explain materials, extra credit assignments/modules, etc. There are many things you can do, and the needs of each eCampus class you teach may be different.

When you personalize the course, you may need to assess how you will evaluate the students. There are many commonalities between evaluating online learners and evaluating Face-to-Face learners; however, there are some notable differences. Take a look at the information below to understand the best evaluation strategies for online learning.

Evaluation Strategies for Online Learning

Pre-Testing

Sometimes you may find it helpful to develop a short online pre-test to find out what your students know prior to taking your course. This would be delivered during the first week of the course.

Objective Assessments

eCore and eMajor quizzes and exams generally fall into this category. These are usually multiple choice (including true/false format) and have clear, unambiguous answers. These are useful for recalling of facts and are easily graded - particularly through our course management system.

Subjective Assessments

Examples include essays, projects, and discussion postings. As an instructor, it is your judgment that determines the grade. Hint: Use caution when grading discussion postings, particularly when they are on a scale of 1 to 5. Sometimes, instructors believe that a grade of 3 (on a scale of 1 to 5) is an average grade - but it's actually a D! A 3.5 or 3.8 would reflect more of an average grade.

Interactive Assessments

Examples include virtual experiments (in chemistry, for example), language software that provides feedback, or games and polls that provide feedback. These are intensive to create, but are usually enjoyable and useful to the learner.

Group Projects

These are very challenging in an online course, and often a source of much frustration for students. Some students do most of their work during the day on weekdays, while others do it in the evenings or weekends. This schedule conflict makes it difficult for group members to collaborate. On the other hand, group projects can provide students with practice in working as part of a team. You should consider carefully whether or not to include a group project in an online course, and make sure that if you do that your rationale is valid. Make sure to clearly define roles, a peer review process, and procedures for students if one (or more) group member disappears.

Peer Review

This puts the student in the role of judge, and can be an effective learning technique.

Participation

A grade for participation should be included in all eCampus courses - or at least built in to the grades for discussion. Students who participate thoughtfully and regularly through class discussions, peer review, or contribute other resources should be rewarded for their efforts. In other words, required discussions should be associated with a grade item.

Self-Assessments

These aren't graded (but could be given extra credit for completion, if desired by the instructor), and help the student determine whether or not he/she understands the material. Multiple attempts should be allowed.

Extra Credit

Extra credit opportunities allow successful students to deepen their learning, and help struggling students by providing additional learning opportunities while allowing them a means to increase their grade. They also present opportunities for the instructor to introduce information that may have not been available earlier in the semester (ex: a visit to a lecture or a play, a short paper related to an item in the news). Some instructors also like extra credit because the instructor doesn't have to consider exceptions every time a student turns in late work (or misses an assignment) because of unforeseen circumstances (lost power due to storm, illness, family emergency, etc.). The opportunity to make up the work is built into the extra credit opportunities.