Assessment in e-Learning Reflection Week 3

Entering the end of week 3 in our Assessments in e-Learning graduate course, I would like to share three of my reflections and observations from that material explored:

1. Concept mapping and mind mapping aren’t necessarily the same thing.

2. Entities or items that I previously thought of as activities can also serve as assessment.

3. Assessment is the most effective when it reflects comprehension of learning revealed as time goes on evidenced in performance.

Dr. Curtis Bonk teaches online instructors that assessment can help us understand which students learn best under which circumstances and how to thus adjust their learning to suit their learning style. Whereas the old-fashioned way of assessing includes giving standards tests and quizzes at the end of a unit, student-centered assessment offers the student creative or unique ways to showcase their learning as the course progresses. This learning is also intended to support the material. In short, the assessment is a learning mechanism and not a judgment tool to determine how much was memorized. Activies such as creating and writing regularly in a blog can also function as an assessment tool. Students not only do the activity, gaining skill in blogging and writing, they can keep track of their own progress and highlight what they have learned through their blog.

 

Two things that interested me during this third week to explore and research further include as follows:

1. This week we educators were given a toolbox of potential new online tools to use for our courses, either assessment or otherwise. As an artist myself, I am very excited about exploring some of the visual collage-style software such as Mural or Imagination.

2. A class wiki can be used as both an activity and an assessment. Less familiar with wikis myself, I am not on a hunt to discover how best to utilize their benefits in the form of indirect assessment on student learning.

One question that I still have for the course is this:

1.      How are online instructors to adhere to a learning-centered approach to teaching and offering assessments in a classroom where they are limited by the parameters of a school or platform that does not allow beyond the traditional testing format? Many schools are not up-to-date with the new method for teaching online using interactive platforms, tools and technology.