Question: How should we be assessing online learning in K-12?
Answer: I’m currently teaching an online Master’s course called “Teaching K-12 online”. It’s a bit like a play within a play and it’s pushing me to think about best practices. This week, I’m grading students’ plans to create an online course module and when it comes to thinking about assessment, several students have expressed concern that kids could “use Internet resources” to answer questions.
Here’s one response from me to a student who expressed this type of worry:
Re: access to other materials during assessment…I’m starting to think that this could be viewed as a really good thing. What if we started assessing students’ ability to find answers with sources cited? What if the assessment were based on the student’s ability to summarize and synthesize what they learned? What if instead of “one” answer, students had to come up with three possible answers and a rationale for which answer they think is best? For ninth graders, this kind of thinking is hard, hard, hard…but to me, this is exactly the kind of thinking kids need to learn to do.