Learning Analytics - Real-Time Competence Management and Data-Based Content Development
Online learning platforms give you real-time and objective insight into the learners’ progress and...
Assessments and tests are a central part of the learning process. They measure learning, guide and support learners, and help motivate them. In online courses, the role of assessments is especially important when the goal is competence development and ensuring the learners have truly acquired the knowledge.
Different assessment methods, such as multiple choice tests and self-assessments, offer opportunities to track learning in a versatile and efficient way. Digital learning platforms provide tools to support this.
In this blog post, we explore ways to design effective and impactful assessments and tests for online courses that support learning and provide valuable insights for both the learners and the instructors.
Why Assessments and Tests Are Valuable in Online Courses
They measure the achievement of learning goals. Assessments help to determine whether the learners have reached the goals set for the course.
They validate learning. Assessments confirm that required knowledge and skills have been acquired. They can for example serve as the basis for certificates or competencies.
They support the learning process. With tests and assessments, the learners can track their own progress. The assessments give feedback to the learners and help them to reflect on their skills and identify areas for improvement.
They provide insights for instructors. Assessments help to identify which topics are challenging or require additional support. They serve as feedback for improving the course content and pedagogy.
How to Design Effective Assessments and Tests
- ✨ Consider what you want to measure: in addition to tracking the final learning outcomes, assessments can serve multiple purposes, such as identifying the learners' starting level or collecting course feedback.
- ✨ Define the course's learning objectives. Align the assessments with these objectives.
- ✨ Ask relevant questions that for example help to determine whether a learning objective has been achieved.
- ✨ Use clear language and avoid ambiguity. Make sure that the instructions are sufficiently guiding.
- ✨ Choose appropriate assessment methods. Suitable methods for online courses include for example essays, multiple choice questions, or open questions. You can also ask the learner to send an image or a screenshot or fill out a self-assessment survey. Digital learning platforms offer a variety of tools for implementing assessment.
- ✨ Utilize a variety of assessment methods to ensure the assessments' effectiveness and to gather diverse data.
- ✨ Make sure that each of the course's learning objectives is assessed using a suitable method.
- ✨ Utilize automations in assessments. The tests can be designed to be automatically graded, saving the instructor's time. Manually graded tasks, such as essays or projects, are also an option in online learning platforms, but these are always more time-consuming.
- ✨ Define automatic feedback texts that will be shown to the learner after they have submitted an answer. These can often be customized based on whether the user has answered correctly or not, for example in multiple choice questions. Feedback deepens the learning and encourages the user to continue.
- ✨ Gather feedback on the effectiveness of the assessments, for example whether the course's tests supported the user's learning process. This helps to improve the assessments.
Ways in which digital learning platform can support assessments and tests.
Pros and cons of different assessment types in online courses
Multiple choice questions
Multiple choice questions are fast and easy to answer. They fit versatile use cases, such as testing knowledge, yes/no questions, or self-assessment. Multiple choice questions can be automatically graded, saving instructor's time.
Creating incorrect options for multiple choice questions can be difficult, however - how to come up with alternatives that are not too obvious and from which the user can learn? The instructor needs to be aware of common mistakes related to the topic in order to be able to design meaningful answer alternatives. The need for predefined answer alternatives can also limit the scope of questions.
Open questions
Open questions, like shorter responses, reflections, explanations, or longer essays, allow deeper thinking for the users. In open questions, the learners can express their thinking more freely than in multiple choice questions, for example. In open questions, it's also possible to show the user a feedback text after answering, which can be for example a model answer.
There are limitations to open questions as well. The automatic feedbacks may be generic or repetitive, not supporting individual development. Learners may receive points for any response, regardless of quality. Especially for longer essays, manual grading may be more useful for both the assessment purposes and for the learner's learning outcome, but this obviously requires more time from the instructor.
Practical tasks and projects
Practical tasks and projects, such as case analyses, project plans, learning journals, or video submissions, let the learners apply what they have learned in practice. These can include assessment criteria which make the assessment clear and fair for the learners and help the instructor's workload.
Practical tasks require manual grading from the instructor, which makes them a time-consuming assessment method. The evaluation of tasks can also be subjective and the instructor's perspective may influence the results.
Surveys
Surveys can be used for self-assessments, mapping the learner's knowledge, or collecting course feedback. Surveys can help the users to reflect on their own skills and identify development areas. These are easy to implement and they are suitable even for large groups.
Surveys can be, however, subjective and potentially inaccurate, as self-assessments do not always show the true level of skills. Surveys are better suited for evaluating experiences and perceptions, and not necessarily skills. It can also be difficult to analyze the results for surveys, as the interpretation of Likert scales might even require some statistical knowledge.
Peer learning
It is possible to delegate the grading work by using peer reviews and letting the course participants review each other's answers. This assessment method is suited for courses with many learners and who are progressing at the same pace. Peer learning might not be that suitable for courses that are self-paced and independent.
A self-assessment survey of the user's learning.
How to analyze the results of tests and assessments
Utilize the platform's learning analytics tools to analyze the assessment results and to improve your assessments. Learning platforms allow you to track for example the task responses, course completion rates, heat maps showing where the users spend most time, or response rates to tasks.
Review the results from multiple perspectives, such as individual or course level. Review also each question.
Individual-level analysis shows you how well a learner has performed in different course areas, what tasks or questions were most challenging to them, and whether their skills align with the learning objectives.
Group or course level analysis allows you to examine how many learners achieved the learning objectives, where most learners struggle, and whether the assessments and tests are too easy or too difficult.
Question-level analysis shows you what percentage of the users answered correctly or incorrectly, whether the question was clear or confusing, what tasks led to error. You can analyze whether the errors were due to the task instructions being unclear, or the course not teaching the topics well enough.
Improve the assessments and materials based on the results. If a question is not working or does not measure the intended learning objective, revise or replace it. If the learners are not achieving the learning goals, review the goals: are they realistic or should they need clarification. Also assess the assessment: is it efficient or does it need improvement. If the course results do not meet the expectations, it might also be useful to offer additional practice material or resources for challenging topics.
Efficient assessments support learning
Well-designed assessments and tests provide valuable insights for both the course creators and participants. Effective assessment consists of clear learning objectives, versatile assessment methods, clear and unambiguous questions, and leveraging automations. The assessment results should be analyzed systematically, on individual, group, and question level, and the assessment and course content should be developed based on the results of the analysis. This way, you can ensure that the assessment truly supports the participants' learning and measures their knowledge.