Alternative Assessments

Online Teaching

Alternative Assessments

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Creating Online Assessments for Learning

Read FOCUS article by Dr. Susan Joudrey.

Inclusive approaches to support student assessments聽

Fortunately, for much of the time, 国民彩票 faculty and students are able to teach and learn as planned in the syllabus. However, whether due to weather, travel, or illnesses like聽COVID-19, there are times when these plans need to be adjusted. This resource offers approaches to making these adjustments, especially in the area of assessment.

In times of significant disruption, the key goal is to help students get the support they need to meet your most essential learning outcomes. Teaching in times of disruption may involve thinking creatively about how to build students鈥� knowledge and skills in different formats to complete the same assignment. An example of this adjustment includes delivering a聽virtual lecture聽and then having students complete the original exam using the聽Quizzes tool聽in Brightspace.

However, instructors may also wish to think creatively about the assignment itself, through an approach that may not be intensively digital. For the purposes of inclusion, it is important to be mindful that some students have limited access to laptops and data plans. An assessment that relies on face-to-face interaction (e.g., discussion, presentations, debates) might be completed in聽Collaborate, or it could be substituted with an assignment in a different format that meets the same course outcomes. One example of a "low tech" adjustment includes asking students to write a pro/con issue comparison memo in lieu of participating in a classroom debate.

Below, we describe the most frequently used assessments in 国民彩票 courses and offer low- and higher-tech options for helping students to complete them.

If you are using an assignment type that is not detailed below, contact the Centre for Learning & Teaching (CLT)聽to talk through options specific to your teaching context.

Discussion / participation

Use the Brightspace Discussions tool. Other possibilities for creatively maintaining discussions include:
鈥� Holding discussions or office hours via conference call. Instructors can use Collaborate to hold such discussions.

Writing

In many ways, papers are the ideal assignment during times of disruption because they require fewer adjustments compared to other types of assignments. However, because of the lack of peer or instructor contact to go over drafts or discuss expectations, ideas to creatively support student writing include:

鈥� For peer feedback, instructors can set up pairs or triads for students to email drafts to each other. Just as with any peer feedback process, it is most helpful to structure these discussions by sharing a rubric in advance, or asking students to annotate their draft with questions that ask for specific feedback from their reader. Instructors also can ask peer readers to answer specific, descriptive questions like, 鈥淲hat is the biggest unresolved question in this draft? What do you want to read more about in this essay? What are the draft鈥檚 biggest strengths?鈥� (Gooblar, 2019, p. 93).

鈥� Students can use Microsoft Word online to share drafts with instructors. The wonderful aspect of this option is that it also allows students to use the comment feature to dialogue with the instructor, e.g., 鈥淗ere鈥檚 where I think my thesis statement is鈥� or 鈥淗ere is a section that I am struggling with鈥� (LaVaque-Manty & Evans, 2013).

鈥� To offer guidance to students about helpful writing conventions, online tools such as offer resources about topics such as writing a thesis statement and discipline-specific writing expectations.

鈥� Research papers may be tricky for students to complete, especially if the assignment was originally designed to involve a lot of on-campus interaction, use of the library鈥檚 physical collections, or data collection. Consider what the key goals for the research paper are. Bean (2011) lists seven, including how to ask discipline-appropriate research questions, how and why to find sources, how to take good notes, and how to write for audience, genre, and purpose. If your most important goal is source-related, an annotated bibliography might also func