Vonderwell, S., & Boboc, M. (2013). Promoting Formative Assessment in Online Teaching and Learning. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 57(4), 22-27. doi:10.1007/s11528-013-0673-x
The article Promoting Formative Assessment in Online Teaching and Learning was written by two professors, Vonderwell and Boboc, at Cleveland State University. This article focuses on formative assessment techniques that can be used in online courses. The introduction of the article emphasizes the importance of assessment as a tool to monitor student learning and teaching effectiveness, as well as a means to foster student engagement and improve student motivation and achievement. The authors also highlight the difference between “assessments of learning” and “assessments for learning”. Assessments of learning are typically used when assigning grades as an indication of student achievement. Assessments for learning serve the purpose of monitoring student progress as well as giving students feedback to help them close the gap in their knowledge. These assessments are used to inform the teaching and learning to help students improve. The remainder of the article offers various methods of formative assessment in an online course.
The authors provide eight different techniques that could be used in an online course to formatively assess students. These techniques include: online journaling, reflection papers, the minute paper, role play, hook questions, things to keep in mind, questions wall, and checking in with students. Online journaling can be used as an assessment tool to get students interacting and reflecting. The benefit to a reflection paper is that students have the opportunity to internalize what they have learned throughout the discussions. The minute paper is meant to be a fast formative assessment in which students answer questions like “what is the most important thing you learned today?” or “what question(s) do you still have in mind?”. Role Play can be used in an online discussion format where students are assigned roles such as facilitator or critical reflector and may be used to encourage students to interact with one another and monitor their peer’s progress. Hook questions and things to keep in mind could go hand in hand as a enter/exit slip in an online forum, especially after a reading to see what students thought was the main points or what they are interested in. A question wall may be a great way to get students to ask students to each other, or to the instructor, and can encourage collaboration amongst the entire class. Finally, checking in with students via email or in a small group chat is a way to individualize the student-teacher interactions and gage how a student is doing on a more individual basis.
As a high school science teacher, I do not teach my curriculum completely online. I also feel as though a lot of these formative assessment techniques are useful in a curriculum where students are doing a lot of readings and discussions. Although my current curriculum does emphasize in-class discussions, I do not have my students do many readings. However, if some of these strategies are tweaked, I think I could find them very useful in my classroom. The first idea that I found useful is the minute paper, which could be used at any point in a lesson. If I could find a web based platform such as a google forum or polleverywhere, I could have my students take one minute of class time to reflect on a topic that we have just covered. Their responses could be used to then fill any gaps in knowledge, or pinpoint the key targets that have been covered. This could be a very quick and beneficial formative assessment. Another technique I found useful in this article was the question wall. Again, I need to find a web-based platform where I could have students submit a question at any point (e.g. while working on homework, in class, etc…). I would then plan on working this question wall into my weekly plans. Perhaps, as a group, we start Friday’s class by looking at what questions came up during the week and answering them.
