Teaching Online

Interaction and Assessment

By Center for Educational Development and Research (CEDaR)

December 2016
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Contents

Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Course Interaction .......................................................................................................................... 4

Student-to-instructor .................................................................................................................. 5

Student-to-content ..................................................................................................................... 6

Student-to-student ..................................................................................................................... 7

Assessment ..................................................................................................................................... 8

Attendance/Participation ........................................................................................................... 9

Quizzes/Exams .......................................................................................................................... 10

Papers/Reports ......................................................................................................................... 13

Presentations/Projects ............................................................................................................. 14

Closing Thoughts ........................................................................................................................... 16

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Overview

In this section we will go over two integral parts of teaching – interaction and assessment.

While all courses require interaction and assessment there are special considerations when the

course is online versus traditional brick-and-mortar. While some things are the same regardless

of whether the course is traditional or online, the displaced nature of online learning presents

certain challenges due to the lack of the synchronous class meeting so many courses are

designed around. At the end of this section faculty will be able to:

• Use the guidelines surrounding the three types of interaction required in online courses

to prepare administrative documents, course content materials, and communication

procedures accordingly.

• Use the available online tools to create effective and efficient assessment activities

specifically for the online environment.

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Course Interaction

Course interaction is a student-centered concept about the manner in which students engage

with the course and consists of three types of interactions:

• Student-to-instructor

• Student-to-content

• Student-to-student

Three Types of interaction in online learning

Student
&
Instructor

Student Student
& &
Content Student

All three types of interaction go together to make any course successful. What follows are

recommendations to increase the effectiveness of the interactions specifically for online

courses.
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Student-to-instructor

Interaction between faculty and student is an

essential part of any course but due to the

asynchronous nature of online courses there are

inherent barriers that must be attended to. With no

synchronous class meeting to facilitate immediate

[Students working with teacher by Mosborne01
(unchanged)]
communication and feedback, steps must be taken to

set standards and create avenues for timely and relevant connection in order to facilitate

instructor presence in the online environment and the feeling for students that their instructor

is there when they need them.

Standards must be set and adhered to for the entire duration of the online course. Faculty

should always include detailed communication expectations so that students understand how

to communicate with the instructor and also when to expect feedback or reply. The syllabus is

an excellent place for a communication statement. It should be detailed and specific in regards

to how students are to contact faculty and how long students may be expected to wait for a

reply. It should include all the manners in which students may contact their instructor, (e.g.,

email, phone, skype, chat, discussion board, etc.) as well a time frame for reply for

asynchronous options like email or discussion board, or times and days for synchronous options

like skype or phone.

It is not only personal communication that needs to be addressed however. Faculty should also

include statements on assessment specification documents about the length of time students
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should expect to wait for feedback, as well as the specific manner in which feedback will be

provided. Timely communication between faculty and student is integral for efficient and

effective online courses and careful attention and preparation should be made so that

everyone in the course is on the same page. Finally, it is always recommended that faculty

exceed student-to-instructor interaction expectations when possible. While boundaries need to

be set and maintained, having a responsive instructor can make all the difference for a student

in the online environment.

Student-to-content

Much of the learning that happens in higher education

happens when students interact with the content

provided in their course. Whether it be the things

students read, the videos they watch or the activities

they engage in, the interaction of students with the

content of the course is important and should be carefully designed and prepared by faculty to

maximize student success. In this regard it is highly recommended that the content in an online

course be of mixed modalities.

Whenever possible, the types of content in an online course should be varied and

complementary. There are many different types of content to choose from especially with the

tremendous power of the digital space and things like articles, videos, simulations, images,

graphs, timelines, etc. all provide a varied experience for students when learning material.
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Faculty should carefully consider and design the content for their course in order to vary the

methods in which students will engage the content.

Student-to-student

As all faculty know, students talk. They talk to

each other in classes, sharing ideas, experiences

and their understanding of the content in the

course they are taking together. Every online

course should include methods to allow the exchange of ideas between students. The most

common manner for doing this is through the use of class discussion boards. In the online

environment, discussion boards provide an easy way for students to grapple with the content

of the course together. Furthermore, it allows them to learn from each other and the digital

record of the discussion board provides a quality resource they can come back to whenever

they need it. In this manner, it is recommended that faculty provide both academic and non-

academic discussion boards for students to engage in. The non-academic so students have a

space to engage and get to know each other, and the academic where they can have

constructive discussions about course material.

All of this being said, it is imperative that faculty set firm expectations and rules for both

academic and non-academic discussion board use. These should be clearly stated in the course

syllabus and it is further recommended that they be reiterated in discussion board introduction

as well. Furthermore, instructor monitoring of student discussion board use is critical to the

success of a course. Students need to be redirected when they get off task, should be
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constructively criticized when appropriate, and need to know that their instructor is present in

their discussions of course material.

Other forms of student-to-student interaction will largely take care of themselves. Online

students specifically tend to be very good at communicating with one another. Most Learning

Management System (LMS) platforms include a class roster with email capabilities but if not,

students should be invited to share their information if they wish as appropriate. If group

projects are required for the course, careful thought and planning should be done to provide

students with suggestions for working with one another, but groups of students typically crowd

source their own methods that work for their group the best.

Assessment

All courses include assessment but assessment

methods that work in the classroom do not always

function well in the online environment. While

discussing every possible type of assessment is outside

the scope of this Zero Course, this section will provide

some recommendations for the most common types of assessment used in online courses. The

types of assessment that will be covered are:

• Attendance/Participation

• Quizzes/Exams

• Papers/Reports

• Presentations/Projects
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Attendance/Participation

While there is typically no class meeting to attend in

the online environment, attendance and participation

are necessary for students to be successful in an

online course. In the online environment, attendance

typically refers to whether or not students are

consuming content. Are students reading the materials and watching the videos? Most LMS

platforms provide some type of student tracking that can help faculty see the activity going on

in the course environment. While this type of activity should not necessarily be included in any

sort of formal assessment or equate to points in the gradebook, it is important to monitor in

order to provide targeted assistance to students if they need it. If students are not interacting

with the content there is often a problem, and a faculty email could mean all the difference for

that student. It is recommended that faculty explore ways to monitor student activity in order

to catch those students who may be struggling or falling behind.

Participation in the online environment is similar to the idea of attendance and in some ways

intertwined. Are students completing assignments on time? Are they participating in

discussions? Like attendance, student participation in assessment activities is a good method

for catching students who are falling behind. Furthermore, it is not a bad idea to award points

for participation in an online course as an incentive for student engagement with the course.

Whether this is built into assignments, or created using discussion board assignments, is up to

the instructor, but students typically remain engaged and perform better when doing so will

matter to their grade in the course.

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Quizzes/Exams

Quizzes and exams are perhaps the most common

type of assessment in online instruction as they often

provide the easiest method for assessing students.

Quizzes can be used for many different purposes in

online courses. They can serve as reading checks,

participation opportunities, practice exercises, chapter or end of module graded assignments,

etc. The advantages of using quizzes predominantly comes from their ability to provide instant

feedback. As long as the quiz is developed using closed question types (e.g. Multiple-choice,

true false, matching, short answer, fill in the blank, etc.) the system can ascertain whether or

not the student has supplied the correct answer, can grade the quiz all by itself and provide

feedback to students. Most LMS platforms have built in feedback mechanisms that are always

recommended if auto-grading quizzes are used. With built in feedback for both correct and

incorrect answers, the instructor can design and develop feedback that students will receive

right when they need it most. In this way, quizzes are a powerful tool for not only providing

students with feedback on how they are understanding content, but also for establishing

instructor presence in the course. As the instructor, quality written feedback should be built

into all auto-graded quizzes so that students have another opportunity to receive the same

type of feedback their instructor would provide on a quiz in the traditional classroom.
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Many quizzing systems in LMS platforms will also offer open

question types (e.g. short answer or essay). These types of

questions are often necessary for measuring higher order learning

and are a good tool for instructors to use. Their disadvantage is

their inability to be graded automatically by the platform. Open-

"Grading Exams" by Olga Caprotti
ended responses require an instructor to read, assess and provide (unchanged)

feedback which introduces a certain amount of lag in the timeliness of feedback. In this regard,

if open question types are to be used in quizzes, it is recommended that faculty set a consistent

schedule for when these types of quizzes are due, and when students should expect to be able

to review any feedback provided. For example, one online teacher has module quizzes due

every other week always by 11:59 PM on Sunday and holds to a grading deadline of Monday by

11:59 PM to have all quizzes graded and feedback provided. This allows students to review

their quizzes as early as 12:00 AM on the Tuesdays following quiz deadlines. These students

have a predictable deadline and an understanding of when their feedback will be available.

Those students have the flexibility to turn the assignments in prior to the deadline and the

ability to check their feedback when it is convenient to them providing the reassurance of

stability in the course design. With any sort of recurring assessment, predictability is always the

way to go.

In all respects exams are simply bigger or more important quizzes. They use the same type of

questions that are used in quizzes and can take any form such as all system graded, requiring

faculty grading or some combination of the two depending on the items used. Obviously faculty

are the subject matter experts for their course and understand the required types of
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assessments necessary to gauge student learning, but faculty should carefully consider how and

when they want students to rely on them for timely feedback. While open ended items may

provide better insight into student knowledge levels, they can require an incredible amount of

time to properly grade and prepare high quality feedback. It is highly recommended for both

the effectiveness of the course and instructor sanity that online courses strike a good balance

between pre-built auto-graded type assessments and targeted assessment quizzes requiring

instructor time and energy to grade. In the end, well designed and pre-programmed feedback

will always beat sparse hurried feedback from an overwhelmed instructor.

The final thing to consider when developing quizzes and exams for online courses is the

expectation of how those quizzes and exams should be completed. Believe it or not, students

will always err on the side of making sure their grade is as good as it can be instead of honestly

measuring their own learning. It would be naïve to think that students will not reference their

books, course content, or the internet while taking quizzes that are required for a grade

especially when they are working on the course alone in their internet connected place of

residence. To help combat this, it is imperative to write good instructions and expectations for

the course as a whole as well as for specific assignments. Reading checks, or practice quizzes

are better as ungraded items or for minimal points of the overall grade. This will often

discourage reliance on class materials but not always. That being said, it is always

recommended that faculty express the ideal manner in which assessment quizzes should be

completed, with statements about the purpose they serve, what materials should be or should

not be used, etc.

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Finally, if exams are to be used in a course and are to be used as a large proportion of the

grade, it is always recommended that those exams be proctored. Even if instructors allow class

materials or readings to be used during the exams (i.e. open-book), it is always a good idea to

make sure that the student taking the high stakes assessment is the same student who

completed the other work in the course. There are several online proctoring solutions out

there, but the University of Oklahoma has an arrangement with ProctorU. If faculty are

interested in using the service, it is recommended they visit the ProctorU website

(http://www.proctoru.com) and coordinate with them for the exams in the course.

Papers/Reports

Another of the most common types of assessments

used in online courses are papers. While paper type

assessments are basically the same in the classroom

or online, there are considerations to keep in mind

when designing paper assessment assignments in the

online environment. Every paper should have an assignment specification document specific to

that paper and should include all of the things students need to know about the paper (e.g.

topic choice, format, length, whether individual or group, etc.). In general it is always a good

idea to use a plagiarism checking service such as Turnitin™ in order to make sure that the

student is turning in original work especially if the paper is a major part of the course grade. If

Turnitin™ is not integrated with the LMS platform you will be using, contact your teaching

resource center to find out how to use the service manually through the Turnitin™ website.
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Another thing to keep in mind is how revision and feedback will be provided. Many faculty like

to see rough drafts, provide feedback, and return it to the student so that the paper can be

improved. Other faculty often use peer review as a method of helping students improve papers

before they are turned in for final grading. All faculty have ways they have done this type of

thing in the past. Some have students email them the paper, others have students submit the

paper to an LMS dropbox or something similar. There are many methods for managing the back

and forth of paper drafts, but all of the exchanges can be confusing or overwhelming when

faculty are dealing with 30+ students. The University of Oklahoma has a site-license to the

Office365 service by Microsoft™, and when using Word ™ online, papers can be shared via links

in order to allow multiple people to edit, comment on, or share authorship on documents. This

can be an easy and convenient method for faculty to provide individual feedback on student

papers, or for students to provide feedback to their peers. Make sure to take a look at the guide

on how to use Word™ online in the Zero Course in the current module.

Presentations/Projects

The final type of assessment discussed in this section

is the presentation or project. This type of assessment

can take many different forms and while it is outside

the scope of this course to discuss all the possible

options, there are some basic things to keep in mind

for this type of assessment. While there is may not be a synchronous meeting time to include

presentations through meeting software, most student have access to a webcam or a

smartphone in order to record themselves giving a presentation.

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Depending on the course and subject matter these types of recordings can take many forms,

but the biggest hurdle to using this type of assignment is to design and detail the method for

the delivery of the final presentation. If synchronous web meeting software is to be used, it is

highly recommended that some sort of practice session be setup in advance in order to allow

for students and faculty to practice using the software before the graded presentation. If

recording is the method to be used it is necessary to clearly delineate acceptable formats and

delivery methods to be accepted. Some faculty prefer to have digital video files sent to them,

while others would much rather have a link to the video on a video sharing site such as

YouTube™. While having students submit the actual video file may be more comfortable for

some faculty, the size of video files can get quite large and it can be difficult to pass them back

and forth. It is highly recommended that faculty have students upload their videos to a video

sharing service instead and simply supply the link to said video. This method eliminates the

need to send large files back and forth over the internet and the files will not take up valuable

space on an instructor’s hard drive. Whatever route an instructor chooses to go, the

instructions and expectations should be clearly stated and explained in an assessment

specification document for the particular presentation or project.

There are many other forms projects could take. Everything from software programs to digital

art, to websites. The biggest thing to think about, plan for, and design is the instructions and

expectations on how the project is to be delivered. It is recommended that faculty members

using any sort of digital project assignment should create their own example and devise the

delivery method in a way that will work best for students and themselves. This may require
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talking to LMS platform administrators or University IT to come up with the best method to

share these types of assessment items.

Closing Thoughts

Online courses wither or thrive based on the types of interactions facilitated by the course and

instructor. Careful consideration and mindful design should be done prior to the development

of any online course in order to iron out the best way to tackle the three types of student

interaction in a course. Similarly, assessments are integral to any course and become especially

important in the online environment due to the typical lack of weekly synchronous class

meetings. Faculty should think hard about the best way to design their assessments in order to

balance the need for student flexibility and autonomy as well as the time demands they place

on faculty when providing timely and considerate feedback. Plan ahead, be creative, and try

new things.