Online assessment is a tool that has many possible advantages and disadvantages for your classroom. Quite often I have been in university courses where the assessment for those courses is entirely online through a system such as Blackboard or Moodle. As a student, I have always liked those courses simply because I can always get my grades back as soon as the tests close, and because all of my grades are displayed on the one simple page so I can see exactly where my grade is sitting at. However, some of the downfalls that I have personally seen while using these systems included: the system crashing in the middle of a test so everyone had to start over, distractions from others in the testing center (such as kids in the hallway or people listening to music), and not getting enough feedback on why I received the grades that I did. When thinking about online assessment in younger classrooms, I believe that it is still more realistic to use a blended technique of in-class assessment and possibly trying some forms of online assessment as well if it is suitable for your class. One online evaluating system that I have seen with kids that is extremely effective is the Raz-Kids online reading center which helps teachers to discover what reading level each individual is at, and what areas of comprehension questions the students are still struggling with. In the Raz-Kids program, teachers get a grade book which tells them exactly what questions the students got wrong and whether it was a vocabulary mistake, a comprehension mistake, a synthesizing error, or an inference mistake. Teachers also have full control to move kids up or down in their reading level. The kids really loved using this program, but my fear is that teachers would not get the chance to listen to the child’s reading fluency, and wouldn’t get as much information about where the student is struggling as they would by doing a one-on-one reading assessment. This is just one example of why I think that teachers in elementary need to give a blended approach between personal and online assessment. I am, however, a big fan of teachers experimenting with online assessment measures and trying to discover which things might possibly work for their class. While looking up test-making websites I liked the Easy Test Maker platform, but naturally they make you pay for all of the best features. One site that I have used and found very easy to navigate was Funnel Brain but it doesn’t work great as a summative assessment because from what I understand you can’t see student individual grades and what questions they got wrong. I think sites like Funnel Brain would be better to be used as formative assessment because the students could create their own questions and flashcards and then browse each other’s projects as a way of testing their knowledge on a subject. I also enjoyed reading through the list of 10 Great Websites for Creating Free Online Exams and Quizzes. Also, while reading up on this week’s topic I thought that the 34 strategies for developing effective on-line assessment was a great resource for making sure that teachers are being realistic, fair, and prepared while creating online assessments. After thinking about this topic, I have composed a list of overall advantages and disadvantages that I have discovered or brainstormed about this topic.
Advantages
- Less marking time for the teacher, which means more preparation time for other classes
- Often instant feedback for the teacher and the student
- The ability to set Computer Adaptive Assessments so that the content is individually differentiated by student readiness
- Possibly more engaging (and more realistic for the future) way to write tests or complete a course
- Assists teachers in identifying students strengths and areas that still need work
- Good for liability sake because all of the assignments and comments given should still be on record
- Good to show formative assessment of growth throughout the year
- Teachers can add additional elements to assessments such as video or song clips which broadens their ability to ask questions about those mediums, about the related content of those mediums, about relevance or cross-comparisons to a subject, or for students to personally or critically respond to those mediums.
- Can randomly sort questions so that each test is different to eliminate copying from partners
- Online testing centers (like ours at the University) allows students to take their online tests at a time that is more convenient for their own schedule.
Disadvantages
- All students may not have equal access to technology or knowledge about using technology
- Harder to monitor for cheating
- May have to account for technical difficulties
- May be gaps in communication
- Teachers may misinterpret data or may not understand why a student can’t make some of the connections. Or they might misinterpret what message the student was trying to get across if they don’t ever get the chance to meet face-to-face with that student.
- May be harder to test some outcomes.
- Can sometimes be harder to model or give examples to the class