3 Tips to Assessing Team-Based Learning Online - Assessment and Collaboration in eLearning

Many theoretical and empirical analyses emphasize the importance of active participation and collaboration among learners in promoting the effectiveness of online learning.

However, in most eLearning courses, traditional individual assessment methods remain the primary means for assessing learner performance, and collaborative learning is undervalued and so marginalized.

In a large part, this is because the assessment of collaboration requires a radical rethinking of assessment methodologies.

Goals of Teamwork in eLearning

Every member of your workforce plays a vital role, from new hires to department heads.

There are a variety of kinds of learning goals when it comes to learners working with groups and it can be difficult to address the assessment of collaboration generally.

Some examples of the diversity of focus among collaborative activities in eLearning environments are:

• The collaborative construction of knowledge bases
• The collaborative investigation of scientific phenomenon
• Group engagement in game-like learning tasks or simulations
• Peer review and evaluation of learning products
• Online peer mentoring
• Collaborative analysis of case studies
• Collaborative discussion groups

Even within these various groupings, one sort of assessment will not be appropriate because learning goals vary from implementation to implementation.

 Assessing Individual and Group Behaviors

Collaboration is a complex activity which involves both individual and group effort.

To encourage collaboration, both aspects must be assessed.

The key to successful cooperative learning is maintaining both:

1. Individual Accountability - The learners are held responsible for their own learning
2. Positive Interdependence - The learners reach their goals if and only if the other learners in the learning group also reach theirs.

The way to ensure both individual accountability and positive interdependence is to assess both individual and group learning.

However, deciding on suitable instructional strategies does not always come easy when it comes to evaluating individual efforts in teamwork.

1. Use Rubrics

It is essential for the instructional designer to establish a clear and concise criteria using authentic assessment and rubrics for grading.

It is recommended to use a Likert-type scale with explicit rubrics, measuring at least two dimensions of the team involvement:

1. The functioning of the team
2. The performance of each individual
   

A particularly more effective approach to developing grading rubrics is to assess and reward specific discussion board behaviors and responses on collaboration.

2. Ensure Monitoring and Feedback

It is the designers responsibility to ensure that the instructor is monitoring and providing feedback, using self and group assessment techniques.

Research expresses the significance in continuously monitoring and providing feedback to learners pertaining to group work.

It is essential that instructors monitor group conferences and chats closely, providing respectful and timely feedback on the process and direction, when needed, in order to prevent teams from going off track. This information needs to be placed into the instructor guide of the finished course.

It has been identified that instructors need to:

• support and animate active conversation
• assist learners to stay focused on the assignment
• help with relationship building
• provide reassurance
• monitor and assess learners’ efforts and contributions to both the processes and the product of collaboration

It is also suggested that the learner's understanding of the learning process of group assignments are assessed through individual tests regularly throughout the training.

3. Use Peer and Self Evaluations

In addition to providing continuous feedback, it is important to use self and group assessment techniques.

These strategies can be tremendously valuable for both learners and instructors in all forms of online collaborative learning.

• One technique would be to have each learner within the group anonymously rate their team members.
• In addition, self-evaluation could be utilized by having learners record their own contributions and reflect upon them.
  • This can be done in the form of a journal, or even through a more structured form like a portfolio.

There is also significance in peer and self-evaluations, including having learners respond to and reference their peers’ participation as well as formatively assess their work contributions.

Conclusion

Though there are other techniques not mentioned in this blog post, by using the instructional strategies described, instructional designers and course creators should gain a much better sense on how to appropriately design assessment for individual efforts in group work and collaboration within your eLearning courses.

I hope this post has helped you come up with some better ideas on how to assess your learners in teams. It's super important to be able to decipher which individuals actually did the work and mastered the learning objectives.

Learn more about Collaborative Assessment in the eLearning and Instructional Design for Beginners Community.

The community provides you with a detailed presentation on how to properly assess learners in both small group and whole class discussions.

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