Book Description

Students in traditional as well as online classrooms need more than grades from their instructors—they also need meaningful feedback to help bridge their academic knowledge and skills with their daily lives. With the increasing number of online learning classrooms, the question of how to consistently assess online learning has become increasingly pressing. However, providing such feedback through distance education presents complex challenges that instructors must understand in order to successfully teach and dialog with their students. Assessing Online Learning focuses on assessment as an integral part of learning. Building upon the paradigms and constructivist learning model established in Communication and Collaboration in the Online Classroom: Examples and Applications (2002), this collection offers an assortment of tools and strategies for evaluating learning and instructional design in online classrooms. Both conceptual and practical, this book addresses the salient issues of assessment and offers a variety of assessment tools and strategies for online classrooms and programs, such as self-assessment tools for students to evaluate their progress toward their final products, instruments in which teams can evaluate their progress and contributions, and specific tools and strategies for assessing students' critical thinking and writing skills in electronic discussion boards and in similar reflective writing environments. Written for faculty, administrators, scholars, and researchers in higher education, this book will be a valuable resource to anyone with a particular interest in the topic of assessment and online learning.