Presentation of Monica Ward, for EDEN's NAP webinar on Changing Assessment due to Covid-19: Experiences and Impact - 5 May 2021, 17:00 CET More info: http://www.eden-online.org/eden_conference/changing-assessment-due-to-covid-19-experiences-and-impact/

1. Strategies for Alternative
Online Assessments
Monica Ward School of Computing, Dublin City University

2. Overview
•Academic Integrity
•Checklist for alternative assessment
•Potential alternative assessments
•Alternative exam questions
•Smart Quizzes
•Tips

3. Academic Integrity
•Key requirement of any assessment
• Validity of exams
• Need to be fair to honest students
•Online, open-book, non-invigilated exams
• Academic integrity concerns
• Temptation for students

4. Strategies
•Move assessments from lower orders of Bloom’s taxonomy
• From knowledge (remember) and comprehension (understand)
• To application (apply) and analysis (analyse)
•Can be harder to set exams
•More challenging for students
•More authentic?
• In the real-world, students have access to information
• Need to be able to apply it

5. Strategies
•Another benefit
• Students can use usual digital tools
• Word processing, spreadsheets
• More real-world
• Students don’t usually write long-hand
• (Also more legible)

6. Checklist for alternative online assessments
•Align with the original learning outcomes?
•Require the same level of challenge as the original assessment?
•Minimise new computer and technical skills required in order to
complete the work?
•Help to mitigate risks should online submission not be possible
through Loop in the allocated time?

7. Strategies
•Need to consider
• Different modules
• Technical vs non-technical
• Show workings
• Essay type answers
• Different stages (1st
year vs masters)
• Difference expectations of learners

8. General approach
•Ask probing questions
• check to see if students can apply knowledge
• (rather than check their recall of information).
•Note:
• The students will know and have access to their notes
• interested in how they apply their knowledge.

9. Type 1
•Software Engineering Type Questions
• Set up a scenario
• Ask problem questions
• What approach would you recommend and why?”.
• “How would you implement this approach?”

10. Other probing questions
•What is most important/effective?
•Which method is best?
•How would you design a …?
•What changes would you make?
•What other information do you need?
•Could you explain your reason to us?

11. Smart Quizzes
• Question buckets
• Questions selected at random from a bucket of similar questions
• Example:
• What is the population of Albania/China/Kenya?
• What is 7 + 6/3 + 8/5+ 6?
• Randomised order of questions
• Harder for students to share answers
• Postpone feedback
• Until ALL students have finished

12. Smart Quizzes
•Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs)
• With follow up text question
• Example:
• What is the standard deviation for avocado production for Chile if the
production values for the last X years are ….? (MCQ)
• What does this figure indicate about Chile’s avocado production?

13. Smart Quizzes
•Students have access to
• Calculators
• Other online tools and apps
•Get them to fill out the workings with a step-by-step approach
•Force sequencing
•Time limit

14. Smart Quizzes

15. Smart Quizzes

16. Smart Quizzes

17. Academic Integrity
•Obviously a lot harder for non-invigilated exams
•Plagiarism detection software
•Harder for
• introductory level courses
• Programming and maths
•Smartly designed questions
• Check understanding
• Analysis of concepts

18. Tips to Remember
•Ask questions that ask students to apply their knowledge
•Relate it to project work
• Less chance of plagiarism
•Use different variants of the same question
• Semi-automated tools available
•Use different data sets (if relevant)
•Reserve the right to discuss with students after the exam

19. Positive Outcomes
•Encouraged academics to consider non-traditional assessments
• Videos
• Online meetings
• Interactive Orals
•Encouraged academics to re-consider assessments practices
•Digital transformations in education
• Moving a lot swifter