As previously mentioned, there is a long and ever-changing list of assessment tools and options. You are probably already familiar with many of them. While not an exhaustive list, here are some of the more common types of assessments you will see utilized in courses:

Informal Polling: Usually used to gauge understanding in recent topics, or interest in future topics. These might be specific tools used to aggregate responses, or multiple choice questions utilized to collect more nuanced differences.
Standardized Testing: These are the most common assessments, utilizing problem types such as multiple choice, true/false, matching, and other forms of standardized question formats. The answers are usually the same or similar for all learners, and tend to focus on rote memorization of facts or application of ideas to scenarios.
Written Responses: This can take many forms, from open ended questions in a standardized tests, to comprehensive exams, to term papers. Learners may be required to remember a large amount of specific information, or to take what they know and apply it to problem-based scenarios.
Oral Presentation: Learners either need to prepare a speech or other presentation for the instructor and/or other learners, or answer a series of questions correctly.
Skills Test/Demonstration: When courses focus more on skills than information, often instructors will create some type of hands-on demonstration of skills gained.
Activities: Any course activity can potentially be assessed in different ways, from discussion forums to blog entries to creative artifact creation (video, graphics, sound recordings, etc.) or any other work learners produce.
Group Projects: Group projects are sometimes class activities, and at other times are assessments. These projects usually involve teams working together over a long amount of time to create a complex artifact or presentation.
Portfolios/Cumulative/Capstone Projects: These are usually a collection of many assignments assembled over the entirety of the course (or multiple courses). These are often evaluated on not only the overall content, but also how they are presented or assembled.

References

This text comes from Creating Online Learning Experiences by Matt Crosslin which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. It has been modified from it's original format.