Chapter 9: Assessment for Distance Education

• Authentic assessment refers to tasks that simulate real-world challenges. Ideally, the student is presented with the full array of expectations for a task and is expected to engage in activities that reflect a meaningful response.
• Performance-based assessment is expecting the learner to perform a skill. It may include determining what the learner knows about the skill itself, or focus on higher-order thinking and critical reasoning.
• Asynchronous Communication These flexible online utilities can be used to implement a wide variety of assessment activities.
• Synchronous Communication tools such as audio conferencing, online chat, or instant messaging provide a real-time dynamic for assessment that can offer instructors an immediate sense of how well students grasp the course content.
• Portfolios have a long history of use as summative assessment tools in fields such as graphic design, architecture, and marketing, but are gaining acceptance quickly for their value as formative compilations of work in a much broader range of disciplines. A portfolio might consist of a variety of materials (papers, videotapes, computer files, etc.) reflecting generalized learning across disciplines, or it might be a more specific gathering of content-based materials, such as tests, worksheets, or art projects.
• Problem-Based Activities This instructional approach has been used successfully in medical education for decades and is now being utilized in many other disciplines. Learners are presented with a case or scenario and are expected to analyze the situation and recommend a course of action.
• Journal Writing Students participating in field experiences or clinical rotations are frequently required to track their progress through journal writing, often in response to specific learning objectives or for accountability and accreditation purposes.
• Concept Maps graphical representations of concepts and how they’re related to one another, for assessing student learning is a relatively recent phenomenon.
• Problem-Based Activities This instructional approach has been used successfully in medical education for decades and is now being utilized in many other disciplines. Learners are presented with a case or scenario and are expected to analyze the situation and recommend a course of action.
• Plagiarism Clarifying precisely what constitutes plagiarism and having clear policies for dealing with it are two strategies suggested by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) (2003) for alleviating this problem. Instructors should also attempt to distinguish between plagiarism (i.e., the intent to claim as one’s own someone else’s words or ideas), and the simple misuse of sources, resulting from ignorance or carelessness.
• Cheating To a great extent, teachers assume that students are honest individuals. For example, few instructors in a face-to-face classroom environment would consider checking identification to verify that each person sitting in that room is, in fact, who they claim to be.

http://www.aahe.org/assessment/principal.htm. 


http://www.cast.org/udl/UniversalDesignforLearning361.cfm.
 
http://www.fno.org/may98/cov98may.html.