{"id":424,"date":"2021-11-10T08:57:01","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T13:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lmshero.com\/?p=424"},"modified":"2023-01-14T15:03:27","modified_gmt":"2023-01-14T20:03:27","slug":"assess-online-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lmshero.com\/assess-online-students\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Assess Your Online Students – 8 Effective Strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Online learning has become the new normal. If you are an online educator, chances are that you now have way more students to handle than you did a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With great power comes great responsibility. Assessing the learning of your students is an essential part of teaching effectively. And it is just as important in an online environment as it is in a traditional setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Student assessment is the process of appraising the abilities, proficiencies, understanding, and achievements of your students. It helps instructors to measure how effective their teaching is by linking performance to specific learning objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The purpose of assessment is to determine whether or not your students have actually achieved the desired level of proficiency of the set learning objectives of a module or course itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assessments help you to be aware of areas that students need to improve upon and how your course can be relevant to the student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assessments are beyond students’ grades. Rather, they prepare students to face difficulties, reflect, and be aware of their shortcomings. They push the students to do better so they can be successful in terms of their learning goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Online instructors can assess their students just as effectively as classroom instructors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chances are that you have heard of formative and summative assessments. But what do they actually mean? Let’s find out briefly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Formative assessment is all about ongoing feedback. The goal of this type of assessment is to monitor your students’ learning to garner ongoing feedback that can be used to improve your teaching and their learning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Trumbull and Lash (2013), formative assessment refers to tools that identify misconceptions, struggles, and learning gaps along the way and how to close those gaps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Formative assessment includes effective tools for helping to shape learning, and can even bolster students’ learning abilities to take ownership of their learning when they can understand that the goal is to improve learning, not apply final marks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Common tools for formative assessment include homework, games, quizzes, presentations, research proposals for feedback, projects, and group work activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These tools work excellently when you implement them on a regular basis. Creating schedules for them should be put into consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, summative assessment is for evaluation purposes. Summative assessment evaluates the level of learning of your students, their knowledge, and the proficiency gained at the end of a module or course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Summative assessments are high-stakes in nature. That is because they are more formal and results are more likely to be considered as to how well the students learned. They are usually tracked using grades and the feedback is used to guide efforts and activities in any subsequent courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is essential that the results of summative assessments are not regarded as conclusive, as is often the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Examples of summative assessments include periodic tests, exams, final projects, research work, and reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both formative and summative assessments have their place, but should not be over-relied alone. It is essential that you combine both assessment methods together to gain all the insight that you need into the progress of your online students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to assessing students learning online, there are many strategies to employ. What you choose to go with depends on you and what you feel will work best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Open-ended questions allow learners to express their opinions, thoughts, and feelings on a subject freely, as you assess their knowledge and understanding of a subject. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They push your students to think critically and come up with answers based on your lessons. Students do not have to choose from preset answers. Instead, they apply their cognitive abilities to build responses to the questions in their own words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n