When designing all aspects of an eLearning course, it’s imperative for instructional designers to ensure that learners feel a real connection with what they are learning.
The assessments and activities need to provide the learners with opportunities to solve real-world problems with relevant experience. Therefore, assessment should involve relevant, fun, and engaging, content.
This article discusses suggestions that will help instructional designers create content to more effectively assess the learners online.
1. Scaffold the Assignments
Learners need to feel a high level of support, especially in the beginning of the course.
Assignments should be organized from simple to complex, with the more complex and high-stakes assessments as the course becomes more advanced; aka scaffolding.
2. Use Authentic Assessment
Authentic assessment presents a hands-on, real-world task to learners and uses clearly defined criteria often presented in a rubric to evaluate how well learners have mastered the learning objective(s) and overall goal of the course.
Authentic assessment requires learners to apply their knowledge and skills from several areas to demonstrate mastery of the objectives.
3. Create a Well Organized Plan
When preparing to assess learning, planning is the key. In the eLearning & Instructional Design for Beginners, learn the HARPER Method, a step-by-step instructional design process.
4. Use Asynchronous Discussions
Instructional designers should frequently use discussions to assess and engage learners in the learning process. This has its foundation in the Constructivist Learning Theory.
Discussions are an important part of building a sense of community and connectedness in the online learning environment and they too can be used to assess knowledge acquisition and comprehension. They also can be used as an interactive tool for learning.
5. Provide Rubrics
Before designing the content within the modules of the course, it is important to have in mind how you intend to assess the learners' knowledge - how they will demonstrate mastery of the topic, concepts, or skills.
A rubric integrates assessment with instruction. When using a rubric, instructional designers determine in advance what mastery looks like and outline the criteria accordingly. This also helps tie the assessment to the assignment's instructions.
Additionally, a rubric is given to learners prior to beginning the learning experience so they know in advance how they will be evaluated on the task.
Join the eLearning and Instructional Design for Beginners Community, to learn how to develop engaging and real-world assessments following the tips provided in this article.
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