After our webinar on quality online assessments, I took some time in my courses to look critically at a lot of the assessments there, and what made them effective.

There are so many different things at play in efficacy. But as I tried to break them down, what I found was a sort of tree of requirements. After all, the assignment would need to fit with the learning objectives in order to be effective, but if it weren’t accessible to the student or interesting, then that was a bit of a moot point–we’d never get that far.

So I tried to take a look at the biggest catch-all: our oldest friend, engagement. If students were engaged and putting their all into something, then we can be off to a good start.

Which assignments did students seem to take seriously–and how can I measure that? I looked for strong opinions, creativity, individuality, and even argument. After all, if a student were invested enough to say “I disagree with X on principle,” I know they’re fired up.

I’ve been keeping this on the back burner of my mind as I grade, looking for those (super exciting) places where students seem fired up, excited, angry, or at least awake. And what I found was pretty interesting!

• Test Subject One: Film Studies, Directors of the Golden Age

Golden Age was a serious standout as I looked at it, because the assessments in the course are primarily essay tests. Even I groan when I think the phrase “essay test.” But this was a sort of underdog winner in the category of student excitement, because I often find that they’re writing passionate, opinionated answers to the questions. And the more I think about that, the more sense it makes.

These questions are multifaceted, opinion based, and open ended. Which is awesome! Students who have watched the films (to my relief, seemingly almost all of them–very rarely do I get answers that have me banging my head on the desk and shaking my fist at my bff Wikipedia) enjoy sharing their opinions on them, and they have so many awesome points to make. I love reading their answers!

It puts me in mind of my book club. When we go and open up the discussion questions from the back of the book we get fired up. On paper, it looks like we’re about to quiz each other, but the discussion that happens is so awesome.

What’s surprising is that I have so much more of that valuable discussion happening in the essay test than in the discussion board.

What it comes down to, I think, is the structure of the questions. The discussion board prompts are TOO open ended:

 

I’m with you guys. I’m not sure what to say to that either. It’s only after some specifics get thrown around that many people will start to remember their own examples, thoughts, and opinions.

•  Test Subject Two: Careers, Find Your Future

This is a course that students tend to phone in, which is unfortunate: it teaches some really valuable things that I wish I had known more about before I had to do them for real, like choosing a college program, looking for scholarships, choosing a careers, and looking for job openings.

It seems like a course students would be engaged in, because it’s so individualized. After all, students aren’t told “say you’re a nurse. Find a nursing job.” They take personality and aptitude quizzes, they look at statistics, they pick some things they’re interested in, and they use those fields and careers to do the assignments.

But at the end of the day, a worksheet is a worksheet. And I feel them–when I think the phrase “worksheet,” I’m thrown right back into a specific high school math course with the single least engaging teacher I ever had (and, as luck would have it, I had her 3 times–I blame this bad luck for my total inability to remember how long division works), and I can feel my eyes glazing over. I’m not sure if it’s because they see the format of the assignment and go into autopilot from their Pavlovian experience with them, or if it’s something more nuanced in the way the assignments are written, but the answers I read are often robotic and here-for-the-points. Yes, because X. No, because Y. I enjoyed this assignment.

Did you, though? 

So where to go from here? I want to find ways to insert some passion into those areas that are lacking. Be it by giving the discussion boards a starting point, like an “agree or refute this statement” prompt option or by infusing Careers with some more engaging extra material, I want to up the engagement across all my courses. And I plan to do that by continuing to pay attention to what students respond positively to.