Online Learning
ANYTIME • ANYWHERE

Test Design

• Frequent, short tests help students keep up and stay on track.
• Difficult and unlikely to have help ALL the time
• Make exercises difficult enough to depend on having done the preceding course work.
• Pose higher order, mastery questions requiring deeper knowledge and application of material (i.e., case studies vs. memorization questions).
• Have students relate subject matter their personal/professional/life experiences, reducing the benefits of plagiarism or someone else’s answers.
• Who would work so hard for someone else and not get credit?
• Construct a pool of questions and have the testing program randomly select for each quiz. Each student will get a different set of questions, however many times you reset a quiz.
• Pools guarantee a new version of the quiz should it have to be reset.
• Writing multiple questions can be tedious but just think - once you have created the pool, you can draw from it repeatedly as you slowly add to it each semester.
• When the subject matter allows, make assessments "open book".
• Relieves everyone's stress around potential technical problems like dropped connections, server glitches, etc.
• Renders most cheating pointless.
• Allows questions that require critical thinking, analysis, evaluation, or synthesis.

Time Issues

• Limit the times when the online test is available.
• Set a duration of time to complete the test.
• Estimate how long responses should take to answer if someone knows the material well.
• Factor in how much time might allow students to cheat (look up answers).
• Set the duration of the test to balance these two factors.
• If questions require higher order thinking than fact recall, timing is not a serious concern.

Technical Problems

• Be prepared to reset a test should students lose connectivity or be kicked off the server.
• Make quizzes shorter.
• Provide more of them.
• Give midterms, finals or other longer tests in sections or parts.
• Limit questions in a timed test, or section of a test, to 25 items or fewer.

Alternative Assessment Methods

• Use Authentic Assessment (students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills).
• Use online quizzes as self-assessment only.
• Provide immediate answers and feedback to help with lower order learning tasks.
• Use the baseline knowledge created this way to prepare students for more elaborate assessments.
• Use online quizzes as pre-testing at the start of a course.
• Evaluate performance in a variety of educationally sound ways.
  • Essays
  • Group or individual projects
  • Theses
  • Discussion
  • Original research
  • Portfolios
  • Debate
  • Simulations
  • Contribution to collective information pools like Wikis
  • Creation of products like learning materials, realia, manipulative, inventions, chronicles, books

Checking Up on Performance

• Require outlines and drafts of all papers and essays to see the work in progress.
• Do a quick check for plagiarism on the Internet.
  • Insert a unique phrase from a paper into a search engine (i.e. Google.com)
  • If the paper exists on the Internet, the search engine will likely find it.
• Suspect plagiarism, but can't find evidence on the net?
  • Use chat feature to debrief a paper you suspect with the student.
  • The true author of work will discuss it fluently.
  • A log-in/password system might help but a determined cheater can give the information to someone else to log on