Abstract:

Assessment is an integral aspect of teaching and learning. This usually refers to promotion, certification and accountability and it is named as summative assessment. However, when the aim is to improve teaching and learning, we refer to formative assessment.

Although online education for college and university study has experienced remarkable growth over the past two decades, the links of online education to the assessment of student learning outcomes have been largely overlooked. Assessment, meanwhile, has developed from the use of standardized tests to the deployment of an array of instruments: portfolios, online tests, solving problematic situations, rubrics, online questionnaires and so on; without a thorough analysis of the set of tools most appropriate in each case.

Technology has enabled educators to design courses and programs to improve learning outcomes and has benefited constructivist online environments through collaboration, group work and problem-based learning and designing assessment systems based on careful designed measurement strategies to assist both the instructor and the learner.

The topic on this paper is to design an assessment system based on an online environment without the face-to-face interactions which can be used summatively as well as formatively.

Teachers or instructors can measure students progress and offer feedback to student productions, in order to improve teaching and learning, using diverse assessment tasks:
a) In contrast to traditional assessment, the emphasis is placed on student-centered active learning like performance assessment. This kind of tests requires that students create an answer or product that demonstrate their knowledge and skills, which is important in reinforcing the principle that standards are judged on what a student does, not merely on what he o she knows.
b) Another important assessment instrument is online discussions, which can support the construction of knowledge, as learners expose their ideas into words and build on these ideas through responses from others. The opportunity for reflective interaction can be encouraged and supported, which is not quite common in traditional classroom settings. Besides, the use of discussion rubric with the purpose to encourage learners to participate in timely online discussions that address to certain problems, with thoughtful and constructive messages between students.
c) An online portfolio for learning has important contributions to the evaluation process in the sense that it shows if students have acquired necessary knowledge and skills and also difficulties and wrong statements.
d) Small collaborative projects where students can deepen their understanding on a specific topic.
e) Online tests that students can take at different times under different conditions with different available resources.
f) In addition, with the purpose to take into consideration student-student interactions, the following topics should be taken into account: how many posts to provide good general or specific answer to a discussion topic, how many answers based on an analysis of the topic under discussion and how many messages characterized by clarity of argument or originality of treatment, relevancy, and also unusual insights.

The multiple assessment task provides information about student achievement and gives a broad overview of the difficulties in learning. This paper presents a general measurement system for the tasks performed by students.

Keywords:

Online assessment, online education, designing assessment systems.