Designing for Online Learning: Assessment

Designing for Online Learning: Assessment is a one-week course for educators interested in deepening their understanding of designing assessments for online settings. The course will explore the following essential questions that educators are asking as they design learning experiences online: How might my students demonstrate their learning in online spaces? How do I know what students are learning online? How will students know what they are learning?

Specifically, we will cover different approaches to designing formative assessments, summative assessments, and feedback for students in online settings. We will examine examples of online assessments from GOA’s Student Program and from the field. We will also provide you with design prompts and strategies for getting started on designing your assessments in online spaces. You will also get the opportunity to leverage a global network to connect with educators from all over the world and share different approaches to designing assessments in online settings.

This is a practical one-week course for educators looking to rethink and reimagine assessments in online learning settings. This course is meant to provide strategies, resources, and frameworks for approaching assessment design in online learning settings. While we try to draw on a multitude of examples, this course is not meant to provide content-specific training on assessment design. This course is about frameworks and approaches that can be implemented widely. Additionally, this course is not about setting a grading policy for your school. GOA’s Student Program has over 3000 7th-12th graders each year in fully online courses. While much of our middle and high school experience may be relevant to elementary school teachers, we recognize the unique challenges inherent in online learning for younger students. This course is primarily geared towards educators who teach upper elementary, middle and secondary school students. To address digital equity concerns, we've tried to offer a range of ideas for you to choose from. For more information on digital equity, see the Consortium for School Networking's toolkit.

In this course, you will:

• Define the types of assessments that work well in online settings
• Explore resources and frameworks for assessment design
• Examine examples of assessment strategies and tools from GOA’s Student Program
• Learn about the role that feedback can play in online settings to drive student learning