Section 2: Course Design Pattern and Assessments

Overview

In this section we’ll consider some of the decisions you will make as you design and develop effective assessments for all of your learning objectives. We will also review some of the common issues or problems that faculty may have with online assessments and explore some possible strategies for eliminating or reducing these problems.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

E. Apply effective practices for designing and developing assessments.

• E1. Explain the difference between summative and formative assessments.
• E2. Determine which of the four general types of assessments that you will use in your course.
• E3. Identify the tools you might use to deliver your assessments.
• E4. Identify any potential issues or problems you may have by using online tools to deliver your assessments.
• E5. Create effective solutions to issues or problems related to online testing.
• E6. Design individual or group assessments that will effectively measure the course- and section-level learning objectives (constructive alignment).
• E7. Apply the Quality Matters Standards to the design of your assessments.

How This Section Relates to the Rest of the Book

In Section 1 you began to write the learning objectives for the course. In this section we consider how we can measure student progress toward those objectives. In Section 3, we will keep these assessments in mind as we begin to design the learning activities and materials that students will use to achieve the objectives.