Monday marks the 75% completion deadline, so I will be going into your courses to check things out and then providing each of you with feedback on your progress. Next week is also the time of the development cycle when I start seeking peer advisers to review newly developed courses; this is a great opportunity to receive valuable feedback from other online faculty and it provides a catalyst for making some finishing touches on your courses before they are officially complete. I'll be sending an email to all faculty about peer advising, so if you are interested in peer advising on another course that is currently being developed, just let me know! It is a great way to see what other developers are doing in their courses.
Speaking of what others are doing...don't be shy about adding comments to this blog if you have ideas, questions, thoughts, etc. about development - it might be a good way to bounce ideas off one another and generate some dialog among you as developers.
Moving on, this week I want to talk a little about assessments in our online courses. Hopefully all of you were able to attend the Online Regional In-service yesterday and listen to Dr. Ernst and Dr. Mitch discuss our Learner Outcome Assessment initiative. They delivered an excellent presentation and it got me thinking about ensuring quality assessments in our online courses - beyond the formal LOAPs for each program. So, as a developer, there a few simple things you can do that will go a long way to ensuring that the assessments in your courses are effective in assessing student learning:
- Clear, detailed instructions - Be sure to explain to students how to complete the assessment and include any necessary resources. For example, I just worked with an instructor yesterday on updating an assignment requiring students to create a "concept map" based on a course reading; in the instructions, we directed students to the Additional Resources where we posted several links with explanation and examples of concept maps as well as a tutorial on how to use the drawing feature in MS Word so students could create their own map. It may take a little extra effort on your part, but clear instructions are crucial to a student's success on an assignment.....in the online world, student may be hesitant to ask questions and, if they do, they may need to wait for an instructor's response via email...so the less question marks, the better!
- Specific expectations - Be sure to tell students exactly what you expect from an assignment....this might include concrete expectations such as page length requirement, number of resources use, font size/type, time limit on tests, etc; or, expectations may be in reference to the more abstract components of an assignment: level of analysis, types of examples, whether to define or describe, etc. Regardless, it's very important to explicitly state what you expect a student to demonstrate through their submission of a particular assessment. In my time as DOF, I can easily tell you that most of the student concerns about scores or final grades could have been avoided if expectations had been more clearly laid out for the student in advance.
- Rubrics - Amy has blogged about rubrics in the past, but I think it's a good time to talk about them again. I want to strongly encourage you to create a rubric for any assignment you develop - rubrics are a great tool for students, as it helps them clearly see what is expected of them (see #2 above), but they are also an equally valuable tool for faculty...with a rubric, faculty are more likely to grade consistently and evaluate student learning more accurately. Below are a number of links with information about rubrics and resources for easily creating your own...please take a look! Also, if you would like my assistance, I'll be glad to help create rubrics for your course - just let me know!
- http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm
- http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
- http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm
I hope some of this will be helpful as you work toward the completion of your developments over the next month. As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns!
Kelly
