Scott Olsen

Taking assessment beyond the objective by the development of alternative assessment and value-added assessment, as well as all the others in this course, has the benefit of clarifying course material, providing more student engagement, and assuring more real-world application outcomes. The sky is not the limit although -- there is only so much time to develop resources. However, over time improvement can occur.

Assessing what students have learned can be approached with diverse methods in order to not only adequately evaluate learning but to elevate the process of assessment. More information is gained in regard to student learning as methods move beyond the simplest of objective, true/false questions.

There are boundless opportunities to assess student learning. Being creative and intentional is key to discovering what kind of assessment fits the material and the student. 

Assessment continues to be a necessary point of investigation and debate, and it is often difficult to locate where the view of assessments is in the pendulum swing of academic opinion at a given time. It seems that utilizing multiple tools is a swing back to a balanced approach. With new tools and new learning models, the days of fixed objective exams given year after year certainly seems to be over.

I am learning that assessments are increasingly a conversation that elicits a broad spectrum of response and reaction. The goal of assessment tracking back to learning outcomes is critically important as is the development of critical thinking. 

I see value in the holistic assessment as a way to introduce and ingrain basic concepts as well as the ability of the student to personalize those outcomes.

To a large extent, this section reinforces what has been a point of focus in education for quite a long time, that is the accommodation of learning styles. However, this application is now in a mediated environment. When learning style accommodation was suggested years ago the resistest may have been primarily philosophical but presently in the mediated environment that challenges may be primarily pragmatic. Time, tools, and expertise have to be addressed if online educators are going to provide an array of learning options.

Online education has developed significantly since the pre-internet days, however, it has likely not fully reached its full optimization. The hybridization of courses provides the opportunity to tap into the best of F2F, Synchronous, and Asynchronous learning. This is great news but also a huge challenge for development. What technology to include, how to avoid ineffective gimmicks, how to manage all of the moving parts once a course has been created.

I've gained perspective on how to save time and energy. Much of this I have been doing intuitively, but this serves as an excellent opportunity for fine-tuning practices. 

With only 4 years of F2F education in the roughly 11 years of my higher education experience as a student, I can relate to so much of what this content discusses. From the other side of the screen, now having taught a fairly good number of mediated courses, I can relate to the challenges of instructors. I think that the challenges of mediated education actually draw out (exasperate) issues that exist but are accommodated for and ignored in the F2F classroom. From many conversations with students I have heard stories of grades not being posted, calls, and emails not being… >>>