The P3 Collaboratory is pleased to continue “Teaching Tuesdays,” our summer weekly series centered around best practices for remote instruction and teaching effectiveness.
An integral part of designing any course is aligning the course assignments and overall assessment plan with the learning objectives you have developed. At its core, assessment is meant to answer the question, “How do I, the instructor, know that my students know [x]?” Matching the required demonstration of knowledge (the assessment) to the desired level of “knowing” is key to helping your students succeed. Last week’s Teaching Tuesday entry discussed digital literacy as a robust and necessary skill for today’s faculty and students to hone, especially when working within an online environment. When designing (or redesigning) a course for an online “classroom,” instructors should consider how they can support their course learning objectives and foster digital literacy in their course assessments. One way to do this is to align the use of digital assessments (i.e. graded components of a course that make use of digital tools) with the corresponding cognitive level(s) being evaluated.
The following chart uses Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy to brainstorm ideas for digital assessments. This is a not an exhaustive list of your options, nor do we recommend that you utilize every tool listed here in a single class; rather, use this chart as a jumping off point for considering how to some of your course’s assessment structure might be tailored to its online context.
(click here to access the chart with clickable links)
We recommend giving students multiple low- or no-stakes opportunities to practice using any required technology before increasing the grade value of a digital assessment.
Some relevant references to explore on this topic include:
Bruff, D. Intentional Tech: Principals to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching. See especially chapter 4 “knowledge organizations” on concept maps and other kinds of information visualization assignments. A corresponding podcast can be found here.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K., Assessing the Online Learner: Resources and Strategies for Faculty.
Picard, D., & Bruff, D., Digital Timelines.
Reynolds, C. & Patton, J. Leveraging the E-Portfolio for Integrative Learning.
We also recommend that instructors explore the ongoing workshop series and video tutorials offered by our colleagues at the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) division. A snapshot of the synchronous workshops being offered June 10 (tomorrow) - June 16 is below. Visit the links to register!
June 10, 3pm (1.5 hours): “Intro to Canvas Part 2: Assign and Assess Student Work” (repeats on June 16 @ 2pm)
June 11, 12pm (1 hour): “Creating Accessible Online Content: Text, Documents, Images, and Video”
June 12, 10am (1.5 hours): “Intro to Canvas Part 1: Setting Up & Building Your Course in Canvas”
June 15, 12pm (1 hour): “Intro to Teaching Online: Best Practices for Supporting Student Learning”
Other upcoming workshops of interest:
June 11, 10am (1.5 hours): “Engaging Students in Asynchronous Classes” (Facilitated by CTAAR, Rutgers-New Brunswick)
June 25, 1pm (1.5 hours): “Teaching Models for Fall 2020: Understanding Synchronous, Asynchronous, and Hy-Flex Class Structures”
July 8, 3pm (1.5 hours): “Engaging Students in Synchronous Sessions”
July 14, 10am (1.5 hours): “Pedagogy Before Technology: Designing Courses for Online Environments”
Brought to you by the P3 Collaboratory for Pedagogy, Professional Development, and Publicly-Engaged Scholarship at Rutgers University-Newark
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