8. Design activities and assessments to the lesson objectives

In a face-to-face course, instructors often make visual observations to determine whether students are grasping a concept or take advantage of technologies such as clickers. This is called "formative assessment." Formative assessment is the process of understanding the progress of your students’ learning rather than strictly their performance on a final assessment (like a paper or exam). Formative assessments give students low-stakes opportunities to check their understanding of topics, allows them to gather feedback on their own knowledge of content, and gives instructors the opportunity adjust teaching strategies.

Instructors may also design action-based assessments in places where they find traditional assessments to be ineffective online. Traditional assessment offers indirect evidence of learning. For example, students are often asked to select a response. By simply selecting a response, it is hard to know for certain whether a student has acquired the knowledge or if they chose the correct answer at random.

Action-Based assessment, on the other hand, is student-focused. You are asking the student to demonstrate knowledge by performing real-world tasks such as video presentations, debates, portfolios, blogs, and role play.

When using action-based assessments, it is important to provide students with a rubric. Additionally, it is also important to design a rubric as part of the assessment development process. Each rubric should include criteria and level of performance.

Learn more about action-based assessments

In designing an online course, we need to think carefully about how we will provide feedback. Instructors can provide feedback on Canvas through Course Announcements, the Canvas SpeedGrader tool, as well as Peer Review.

Learn more about providing feedback to students

12. Review your course from the student's perspective

You’ve finished building your online course. Now is time to review your course, particularly keeping in mind what students will think when they see your course. The most important item to review is whether your course matches your syllabus, especially as you make changes. Your course structure should also appear to be consistent from week to week, which helps students know what to expect as they navigate the course.

Be sure to disable unnecessary course navigation. Unnecessary navigation disrupts course flow and can cause other problems in your course.

Disable: Files, Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, etc.
Keep: Home, Announcements, Syllabus, Modules, Grades, People

Additionally, proactively incorporate accessibility into your course design and development processes.

Learn more about reviewing your course content

This text is adapted from the ou.edu/teachanywhere webpage Preparing for Fall 2020.