Ideas for Online Assessments

Online learning has a lot of options for online assessments and opportunities to be creative and let students be creative.

Traditional Discussions: Use Canvas Discussions as a forum for your class conversations. When a student submits to a discussion, all other students can see their submission and respond. Tips on setting up and using discussions.

Journaling in Canvas: By using Groups and Discussions each student can be given an individual space to record their writings in a journal-like format (for more information click here)

Student Presentations: Students can post presentations on a discussion board for others to watch, review, and provide feedback. Click here for an example: Student Presentation Discussion Example

Student Led Discussions: Let students take the lead in the discussion. Assign a student leader to a discussion each week or use group discussions and assign a leader to each group.

Example:

Student Led Teaching: Have students present on a specific topic in the discussions and/or using video conferencing. As part of their presentation have them generate several questions for students to discuss that are based on the content they presented.

Project Based Assignment: Allow students to complete a project for their final assessment (or any assessment). Provide clear guidelines and a specific prompt. Scaffold the assignment by having students submit (1) a proposal for their project, (2) a draft or outline, and (3) an explanation for their design approach and delivery mode. Possible project types include:

Building a webpage
Designing an infographic
Creating a podcast where they speak and/or interview others
Creating a presentation with slides

Traditional Submissions Assignments: Submission assignments are turned in online using a Canvas "Assignment," which is like a dropbox. These types of assignments can include:

Papers
Essays
Projects
Case studies
Anything a student would need to submit to a dropbox.

Peer Review Assignment: A peer review assignment enables students to provide feedback on another student's assignment submission. Peer reviews allow communication between students and can help students master the concepts of a course and learn from each other. Peer reviews can be assigned to show student names or display anonymously. Example of a Peer Review Assignment.

How do I use peer review assignments in a course?

Group Assignments: Use a group assignment in Canvas as a space for students to collaborate and work together on a project or paper. The group will submit one item that counts for the entire group. The instructor's grade and feedback will be sent and applied to all group members (saving the time of having to grade the same project multiple times). If the instructor prefers, assignments can be set up for each student to receive a separate grade and feedback.

Quick Formative Assessments:

One Minute Papers: Students summarize what they learned from a lecture, activity, or module and include any questions they still have or areas they need clarity on. This can be completed a regular submission assignment or as a discussion. Example: What were the three to five most significant things you learned from this module (i.e., meaningful, surprising, disturbing, important, useful)? What questions did the content in this module evoke?
Muddiest Point: Set up a one question quiz/survey for each module that asks students to share anything they need further clarification on or that they have questions about.
Mastery Quizzes: Use short low-stakes randomized quizzes to help ensure students are learning key concepts from lectures or other course material. Students can retake the quizzes in order to improve their score.

For more information on assignments and discussions and additional tips visit: Step 6 - Add Assignments and Assessments (Gradebook Setup)