<p>I am a HUGE fan of alternative assessments.&#160; The course I am involved with does not lend itself to formal testing.&#160; I leverage discussion posts, video collaboration and project/artifact production to assess student engagement and understanding.&#160; We have had a lot of success using open-ended questions to "extract" the connections made by the students with the material.&#160; I purposely do not have a "word minimum or maximum" on the discussion posts.&#160; The&#160; students are free to post as little or as much as they want.&#160; I believe this "freedom" has led to richer reflections as the students know there is not an arbitrary number of words they need to post - it's more authentic.</p>