How Do I Assess Students Online?
This article provides tips and resources for assessing students the online learning space, as well as academic integrity strategies.
Table of Contents
Start Here: How to Assess Online Learning
Begin with How to Assess Online Learning for ideas about alternatives to tests to find:
A review of four assessment options
Examples of assessments for a variety of formats, including video recordings, portfolios and The UnEssay
Revisit Transparent Assignments
Review How to Create Transparent Assignments to create purpose and transparency in assignments.
Consider your Academic Integrity Strategy
For an in-depth article, see Academic Integrity Strategy. Also review the following:
Visit Boise State’s Academic Integrity for Faculty website
Incorporate the Academic Integrity Workshop into your beginning-of-the-semester assignments
Use Alternatives to tests
Alternatives to Traditional Exams and Papers from Indiana University Bloomington
Give students choice, where appropriate from the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon
Bloom’s Taxonomy from Vanderbilt Center for Teaching
Move students up in Bloom’s Taxonomy, where possible, to focus on demonstrating critical thinking skills
Try something different! See the table below.
Instead of this | Do this |
Mid-term exam | Short quizzes with each module drawing random questions from large test pools |
Final exam | Final project demonstrating course learning objectives |
Proctored test | Open-book test with random questions to be completed in 45 minutes |
End-of-course research paper | Research paper completed in stages with assignments relating to topic selection, library research and citation skills, annotated bibliography, draft of sections with peer evaluation, video presentation highlighting results and lessons learned, final submission |
Additional Resources
Academic Integrity Links
How to Prevent Cheating During Online Tests by Schoology Exchange
Tips for Online Tests from Boise State’s Academic Integrity Program
Want to stop cheating on online quizzes?...Let them cheat! By OLC Insights
Alternatives to Tests
About Universal Design for Learning by CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology
The Unessay by Daniel Paul O’Donnell
The Unessay by Emily Suzanne Clark
Test and Quiz Tools
Adobe Scan mobile app is free and on Android and iOS; this was mentioned as a tool to get a PDF of worksheets used during an exam to demonstrate work.
FasterScan is an iPhone/iPad app that is a faster way to scan documents (even if they are curled), with your iPhone. It produces a sharp image using image enhancement technology. You instantly scan multi-pages document and send out when there is no scanner nearby.
Adding a Quiz to a Video: This article guides you through the steps of adding a quiz in your own video session.
Can't find what you're looking for? TALK Article Suggestions.
Return to TALK