Vat Kam Hou 屈鑑濠
Senior Instructor, Department of Computer & Information Science (DCIS)

The Essential Faculty Focus Free Reports: Educational Assessment

Updated Free Reports


Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities

Full Report URL 001

001

As online education moves into the mainstream of the higher education ecosystem, one question still persists: “How do I know what my online students have learned?” There are no easy answers, just as there aren’t in face-to-face courses, but with a little creativity and flexibility, you soon discover that the online learning environment opens up a host of new educational assessment possibilities.

Of course, just as with traditional courses, the trick to online assessment is finding the right combination that works best for your particular course. This special report Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities will show you how.

This special report features 12 articles from Online Classroom that will cause you to examine your current methods of online assessment, and perhaps add something new to your assessment toolbox. It even talks about some of the common assessment mistakes you’ll want to avoid.

Take a look at some of the articles will find in Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities:

  • Authentic Experiences, Assessment Develop Online Students’ Marketable Skills
  • Four Typical Online Learning Assessment Mistakes
  • Assessing Whether Online Learners Can DO: Aligning Learning Objectives with Real-world Applications
  • Strategies for Creating Better Multiple-Choice Tests
  • Assessing Student Learning Online: It’s More Than Multiple Choice
  • Using Self-Check Exercises to Assess Online Learning
  • Measuring the Effectiveness of an Online Learning Community
  • Ongoing Student Evaluation Essential to Course Improvement
     

In addition to illustrating how well students meet the expected learning outcomes, well-planned assessment can provide valuable insights for course and program improvement, and can serve as a bargaining tool for resource allocation and compensation negotiation.

Online courses enable a strong student-centered approach to learning and, as a result, assessment. We hope this report helps you design and develop online assessment strategies that take full advantage of the many formal and informal assessment tools now at your fingertips.

Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities features a variety of assessment methods, some that have been adapted from proven on-campus practices and some that are have been created specifically for the online classroom.

If you want insight into how to assess online learning at the course, program, and institutional levels, you’ll want to download Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities a new special report that will help you create more effective online assessment exercises and strategies.

     

Educational Assessment: Designing a System for More Meaningful Results

Full Report URL 002

002

Assessing institutional effectiveness is a noble pursuit, but measuring student learning is not always easy. As with so many things we try to quantify, there’s much more to learning than a number in a datasheet.

When it comes to assessment. Sometimes there are more questions than answers, even after you get the results.

How do you define success?
How do you know what your students are learning?
Are you happy with your assessment results?
Will you use the results to bring changes to learning goals, curriculum, teaching methods, and perhaps the assessments themselves?

Using Assessment Data to Inform and Reform
Assessing student learning outcomes can help institutions understand what students are learning, and where there might be gaps. However, as Trudy Banta notes in her article An Accountability Program Primer for Administrators, “just as simply weighing a pig will not make it fatter, spending millions simply to test college students is not likely to help them learn more.” (p. 6)

This special report Educational Assessment: Designing a System for More Meaningful Results features articles from Academic Leader, and looks at the assessment issue from a variety of different angles to help you a strong assessment program.

  • Counting Something Leads to Change in an Office or in a Classroom
  • An Accountability Program Primer for Administrators
  • An Effective Approach to Generating Questions for Guiding Program Assessment and Reform
  • The Dash to Dashboards
  • Collaborating on Rubric Development: A Work in Progress
  • Surviving Your Regional Accreditation: A Tongue-in-Cheek Reflection
  • The Faculty and Program-Wide Learning Outcome Assessment
  • Assessing the Degree of Learner-Centeredness in a Department or Unit
  • Keys to Effective Program-Level Assessment

Whether you’re looking to completely change your approach to assessment, or simply improve the efficacy of your current assessment processes, we hope this report will help guide your discussions and eventual decisions.

Put to the Test: Making Sense of Educational Assessment

Full Report URL 003

oo3

Educational assessment is one of the most talked about topics in higher education today. Despite the admirable goal of improving student learning, the trend toward greater accountability through increased academic testing carries with it a diverse range of educational assessment tools, methodologies, perspectives, and stakeholders.

If today’s mandates for educational testing has you searching for answers, you’ll want to download this FREE special report Put to the Test: Making Sense of Educational Assessment, developed to share best practices and current thinking on educational assessment in higher education.

On one side of the educational assessment debate, you have faculty who feel all these new educational assessment requirements stifle their academic freedom without providing truly meaningful data to justify the additional workload it generates.

On the other side of the educational assessment debate are those educators who accept the fact that educational assessment is here to stay and believe that, with careful planning, it’s possible to design exactly the type of assessment systems needed to get an accurate picture of student learning outcomes.

No matter which side you’re on … or somewhere in between … you’ll find Put to the Test: Making Sense of Educational Assessment is a great resource for understanding the best practices and current thinking on educational assessment in higher education.
     

Here’s just a sample of the insightful articles featured in Put to the Test: Making Sense of Educational Assessment:

  • Creating a Sustainable, Faculty-Driven Assessment Initiative
  • Assessment for the Millennial Generation
  • Rethinking Assessment
  • What Is the Role of Student Affairs in Assessment?
  • Encouraging Faculty Involvement in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
  • Assessing Class Participation: One Useful Strategy
  • Outcomes Assessment Is Here to Stay, Get Faculty Buy In
  • Assessment Methods Should Match Institutional Goals
  • “Assessmania” and “Bureaupathology” in Higher Education
  • Manias, Pathologies, and Alternative Approaches to Assessment

Best of all, this 22-page Special Report is absolutely free. Whether you’re a new faculty member looking to incorporate assessment into your classes, or an experienced member of a departmental or institutional assessment team, this special report will provide you with valuable strategies and thought-provoking ideas from educators who have successfully implemented assessment programs at their institutions.

Put to the Test: Making Sense of Educational Assessment is yours free when you sign up for Faculty Focus, the new online information resource for faculty in the higher education industry.

     

Go to: Dr. Vat's FST Homepage | Recommended Items (Page 0 |1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9)

Contact Details

Kam Hou Vat, PhD
Faculty of Science and Technology
University of Macau
Av. Padre Tomás Pereira, Taipa,
Macau, China

Room: N327C
Telephone: (Office) (853) 8397-4379, (Mobile) (853) 66501747
Fax: (Office) (853) 28838314 or (Home) (853) 28832731
Email: fstkhv
Personal Homepage: http://www.fst.umac.mo/en/staff/fstkhv.html
Downloadable: CV | Short Profile
Visitor Counter: