Evaluation of Online Student Learning
Many with experience in online learning, both students and professors, find that traditional proctored testing is a major nuisance, requiring each student to be in a particular place with a particular person (a proctor), and requiring much communication between proctors and professor, unless most students are geographically located near a testing center provided by the institution offering the course to be tested.
Whether traditional testing, proctored or not, is a good measure of student learning has been called into question, but will not be treated in this paper.
Because of lessened or more flexible course time requirements, relative to class attendance, physical travel to and from class, etc., online learning does afford increased time on subject matter task possibilities, compared to traditional learning; these additional possibilities include more “real world” like assignments, which can be collected into portfolios of student work for evaluation. The work in these portfolios may well be sufficiently individualized to increase assurance as to who is doing the work.
The time requirements considerations indicated above, and increased possibilities for electronic communication in online learning, compared to traditional learning, also allow for more evaluation possibilities in online learning than in traditional learning, and provide additional possibilities for verifying student identity relative to course work done, especially if unique e-mail addresses are considered, audio and video 1-1 or other conferencing are available, and work done by each student increasingly takes on a distinct individual flavor corresponding to that student. This individual student work, which can include not only e-mail and “real world” like work products, but also threaded discussion, and audio and video from student to professor, can very clearly identify each student; and should be collected in a portfolio which should likely count significantly in determining the grade of the student.
The online environment also increases possibilities for using self-tests (non-proctored) for student/professor diagnosis of learning effectiveness and for grading if desired.