SLMS CPD
Online assessment to enhance learning
Rosalind Duhs
r.duhs@ucl.ac.uk
The brief: produce a toolkit for assessment to
enhance distance learning
Introductions
• Name
• Role
• Interest in /experience of designing online
assessment for CPD
• Any concerns?
Workshop intended outcomes
By the end of the session, participants should be
able to:
• Use the SLMS CPD online assessment toolkit to
design formative and summative assessment
• Adapt the toolkit to their own context
Rough plan of session
• Background, evidence and toolkit (~20 mins)
• Participants design formative and summative
assessment of learning outcome/s (~15 mins)
• Presentation and discussion of participants’
assessment designs and suggestions for redesign of toolkit (~20 mins)
Why focus on assessment?
Assessment shapes learning: Backwash
Online CPD: identifying the problems and
overcoming them with good assessment
design
Build an enticing
web of online
learning
Multiple modes of online communication for
feedback and learning
Skype
Chat
Problem 1
CPD doesn’t always result in learning which is
successfully applied in practice (Zukas 2012)
Solution
Link assessment tasks to practice
(blogs, videos, learners’ cases)
Problem 2
Learners feel isolated
’The loneliness of long-distance learner’
Solution
(Duranton 2012)
Create an online community of practice by getting
learners to comment on each other’s work
(peer feedback on drafts, blogs, logs, informal
accounts of cases, worldwide case exchange forum)
Problem 3
CPD drop out rates are high
20% to 70% (Park & Choi 2009)
Solution
Provide regular encouraging feedback
(quizzes, short answers, logs, blogs)
Use peer learning and feedback
(texts, videos, audio)
Problem 4
In practice-oriented subjects like medicine…
education … must be delivered by and large through
face to face conventional method.’ (Arunachalam
2001)
How can we assess practice online?
Problem 5
In practice-oriented subjects like medicine…
education … must be delivered by and large through
face to face conventional method.’ (Arunachalam
2001)
How can we assess practice online?
360° feedback? Video with Q & A?
‘The parrot test’
(Hunt and Chalmers 2012 p.99)
Planning aligned assignments/assessment
methods
Teaching and
Learning
Activities
Learning
outcomes
Assessment
methods
Learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment are
tightly linked.
Conclusion
We need to be realistic about what we can teach
and assess in an e-learning environment.
Distance learners need extra drive (support).
Careful detailed planning is needed and takes time.
Introducing the draft toolkit
Workshop activity: use the toolkit
Planning assessment for your distance CPD course
1. Select/write a learning outcome
2. Plan how you/peers can provide feedback to
support learning (formative assessment tasks)
3, Plan how you’ll assess the outcome for final
course marks (summative assessment task/s)
References and further reading
Hrastinski, S., Keller, C. & Carlsson, S. A. (2010) Design exemplars for
synchronous e-learning: A design theory approach. Computers &
Education, 55(2), 652-662.
Hunt, L. & Chalmers, D. (2012) University teaching in focus: A learningcentred approach, (Acer, Victoria and Routledge).
Park, J.-H., & Choi, H. J. (2009). Factors Influencing Adult Learners'
Decision to Drop Out or Persist in Online Learning. Educational
Technology & Society, 12 (4), 207–217.
Seagull, F. J. (2012) Human factors tools for improving simulation
activities in continuing medical education. Journal of Continuing
Education in the Health Professions, 32(4), 261-268.
Zukas, M. (2012) Regulating the professionals: Critical perspectives on
learning in continuing professional development frameworks, in: D. Aspin,
J. Chapman, K. Evans & R. Bagnall (Eds) Second international handbook
of lifelong learning. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York, Springer),
455.