Blended assessments of learning

Wow! 
Listening to the webinar this week and there are some great tips in here. For anyone involved in designing assessments this one is worth watching. Answers to questions about preventing cheating, designing multiple choice questions, using LMS settings and more. Watch the webinar to find out how Brad & Angelina can have a place in assessments :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDzPETEdoP0

The reading for this week highlights the importance of giving really clear instructions to learners, remembering that in a F2F environment there is the opportunity to ask clarifying questions. 

Online tests are often used as a quick and easy assessment, but a good online test will take time to set up: banks of questions, randomized questions, appropriate feedback, test questions in Google (students may do this) ...

We spend a lot of time talking about how to prevent our online students from cheating, so this was interesting to read:

"In the design of effective assessments of learning, Hoffman and Lowe (2011, January) note that the “focus must be on student learning, not student control.” Particularly when dealing with online assessment (e.g., the ubiquitous auto-scored multiple choice quiz tools within learning management systems) it is tempting to design a testing environment in which all variables are controlled and student responses do naught but reveal students’ mastery of course objectives. However, as Dietz-Uhler and Hurn (2011) note, “the evidence, although scant, suggests that academic dishonesty occurs frequently and equally in online and face-to-face courses” (p. 75). It is counter-productive to adopt an adversarial stance as we attempt to fence in students to prevent them from cheating (in any modality). Nevertheless, there are steps we can take to make online testing more effective. Many of these are applicable to face-to-face environments as well."

 I like the idea of the one-sentence summary:

"Students answer seven questions separately: “Who? Does What? To Whom (or What)? When? Where? How? And Why?” Then they put those answers together into one sentence."

Now to consider where I can use that.