Are you struggling with effectively assessing the knowledge of learners online?
When it comes to assessing the online learner, the most effective solutions in a traditional course don’t always transfer as well online.
Instructional designers need to learn new and innovative ways on best practices of learner assessment.
I will discuss a few examples on how you can apply these strategies in an eLearning course.
Using Portfolios to Asses Learning
Online portfolios can be used as an assessment tool for formative and summative assessment, displaying learners' work, and facilitating progress monitoring.
Using ePortfolios transforms learning goals and outcomes into visible objects, leading to a greater understanding of how pieces of a puzzle relate to one another and fit together as a whole.
Now you will learn steps in developing portfolio assessment for your online learners.
1. Decide on a purpose for the portfolio.
Learners should take part in this step to increase authenticity of the task. Instructors need to monitor their learners’ progress overtime.
2. Identify the cognitive skills and dispositions that are intended to be measured.
A deep understanding and genuine achievement should be assessed.
3. Decide on a safe location for the portfolio.
There are many websites that offer free space to place an ePortfolio.
4. Decide on which products will be placed in the portfolio as well as how many samples of each product.
To enhance a sense of ownership, learners should be involved in this process as well.
5. Build portfolio rubrics.
In each content category of the rubric, you should construct a list of the primary characteristics that are important for each cognitive learning outcome.
Then construct a rating scale, describing the range of learner performance that should occur for each trait.
6. Develop a procedure to combine the portfolio ratings.
You will have to decide how to aggregate the scores from the rubric into a final score or grade. You might also want to consider assigning different importance on weight to the products.
7. Determine the logistics.
These are the last few details left in the process of developing a portfolio as an assessment.
These tasks include:
- Time lines
- How products are turned in and graded
- Who has access to the portfolio
- Planning a final conference
Portfolios show the cumulative efforts and learning of a particular learner over time. They offer valuable data about learner improvement and skill mastery. You, too, can design ePortfolio as an assessment tool.
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