The document outlines key strategies for assessing asynchronous and synchronous online discussions, focusing on criteria such as participation, content and language skills. It emphasizes the importance of clear assessment policies, timely feedback, and various assessment methods including self and peer evaluations. Additionally, it provides a range of activity ideas for rounding up courses, including reflective exercises and engaging final tasks to enhance learner engagement and assessment outcomes.

1. Ideas for what, when, why and how
Presented By:
Tommy and Kristin

2. •Assessment of asynchronous discussions: what, when,
and how
•Assessment criteria for (a)synchronous discussions / chat:
participation, content/knowledge and language skills
•Ideas for activities to round up a course

3. Why? To assess (a)synchronous discussion
forums or not
 Online discussion forums /chats are (permanent) records of
learners’ work, and as such allow for assessment to occur
 Learners may have spent a lot of time on these and believe
these to be important to their learning – to assess these forums
mirrors perceptions of their worth
 If not assessed, learners may indeed decide these are ‘marginal’
learning activities and so not worth their time
 It may promote a certain degree of involvement and
motivation
 To feedback to learners about their knowledge of the content,
or to focus on use of language

4. What? Quantity or quality or …?
 Quantity is often NOT the chosen route as this may lead
to a high volume of postings /chat with potential for a
lack of quality
 Quality could be considered from many angles: in a
language course this could be about the accuracy/fluency
of the English used;
 in other contexts quality may come from aspects such as
‘relevance’ (how relevant are comments to the topic?),
‘initiative-taking’ (do the learners initiate a topic or another
direction in the discussion?), ‘facilitative’ (do the learners
facilitate understanding of their / others’ ideas by offering
explanations and or questions) and ‘originality’ (how original
are the discussion comments?)

5.  Other aspects of courses could also be considered e.g.
task achievement – e.g has the group discussion led to
achievement of the set task
 Not all discussion forums need be assessed.
Forums/chats that carry a grade need to be specified and
the criteria that will be used should be set out early on in
the course in assessment documentation

6. When?
Time, and more time
 Prior to a course starting, the tutor needs to have decided
specifically which items / discussion forums will be
assessed, and how these will be assessed
 If a particular forum/chat is to be assessed, then a time
frame needs to be made clear
 This type of assessment may mean that a tutor has to look
at a large number of recordings / forums and this may
need a lot of time for reading / assessing – so (a) allow
time for it, and (b) don’t use this as an end-of-semester
assessment as it may prove far too time-consuming

7. Prepare
assessment
policy
Decide on
Present policy
the aims of
early in course
discussion /
/ get learners
chat in the
feedback
course
Course
Planning
Stage
Aim for the
What chat
assessment
sessions/which
policy to have
discussion
positive
forums to assess
impact
Decide
criteria for
assessment

8. How? Tips for synchronous and
asynchronous assessment
 As online discussions forums are examples of written and spoken
English, the tutor may wish to exploit descriptors as used in public
exams such as IELTS or FCE to assist in grading learners’ use of English
 The e-tutor need not be the only person to assess postings – there could
be self-assessment, peer assessment or a mix of these
 Communicate the grade system and criteria to learners as soon as
possible (preferably in a document that outlines the assessment items
and the relevant criteria at the start of the course)
 Provide models of appropriate/ inappropriate/exemplary postings to
aid understanding of (less concrete )criteria
 Group discussion threads rather than whole class discussion could be
used – this may tie into task achievement, and also bring up the issue of
awarding the same grade to all members of the group, rather than
individual grades

9.  Wait until students are familiar with the chat forum before 1st chat
assessment
 Plan chat sessions in advance in order that you provide opportunities for
all learners and so that the assessment is done appropriately
 Have questions prepared in a word processor to quickly copy and paste to
the chat
 For voice chat, use record function so you can assess the chat later
 For role play, you can send students private messages about their role. In
order for different learners to have a chance at utilising different skills
or language functions, tasks could be given in which learners are
assigned (secret) roles to play e.g. the protagonist, the antagonist etc
 If assessing content / simulations have follow-up questions ready and
strategies to deal with incorrect responses
 Not only tell students what is being assessed, but point out what is not
being assessed to encourage achievement of the aim

10. Assessment
Criteria 1
Assessing Participation
Possible Criteria
Attendance / Punctuality/Regularity
Making contributions to the discussion/chat (i.e. minimum
number of responses)
Following Netiquette agreement
Not assessing quality of contributions (as this is beyond the
participation criteria)

11. Assessment
Criteria 2
Assessing on Language Courses
Possible Criteria
Assess uing criteria similar
to f2f speaking and or writing assessment (task achievement, range, accuracy, etc)
Assuming text chat/discussion forums are a genre, assess chat management: turn-
taking, collaborating, agreeing, disagreeing, moderating
Assess knowledge of discrete grammar/vocabulary item
Can assess grammar / vocabulary by eliciting using definitions, teacher types in
gapped sentences or sentences with errors to, Ss respond in functional situations

12. Assessment
Criteria 3
Assessing Knowledge / content
Possible Criteria:
Not an assessment of chat/discussion per se, but could be used to
brainstorm or revise prior to an assessment
Chat/discussion could be used to take the place of f2f oral exam,
where an examiner evaluates a candidates’ knowledge on a topic
In 1-to-1 session, teacher could question and probe a topic
In a group session, teacher could encourage a discussion or debate:
by for example asking different students to discuss 2 sides of an issue

13. Assessment
Criteria 4
Assessing Simulation
Possible Criteria:
Simulations could be used with these courses: training a new
customer service agent or a sales rep, teaching procedure for an
inspection, safety procedures, etc.
Teacher can prepare different scenarios and assess students’
responses based on previous course input
With groups, teacher could assign roles to different students who
then carry out a role play to simulate a situation

15.  Parting gifts (as in this course): Participants leave a
personalized ‘gift’ for the group (Hockly & Clanfield 2010:
89)
 Compose a how-to guide to take away from the course:
Similar to the present task – give different groups different
aspects of the course to some up.
 Farewell message: A space (forum, wiki or soundboard)
for course participants to leave a goodbye message to
everyone else. (Hockly & Clanfield 2010: 89) Or these could
take the form of ‘fun’ certificates that students jointly
construct on a wiki to be given to/ printed out for their
colleagues.
 Advice for the next group: A forum or wiki e.g.
Wallwisher where all participants leave at least one piece of
advice for future participants who will take the next course.
(This could be a fun activity and useful for the tutor as
implicit feedback).

16.  Create a composite of the perfect e-tutor: (Example for our course)
Using a cartoon character as an image, participants create a profile of
the perfect e-tutor. It might say:
 Super E-tutor knows all about the tasks inside Moodle
 Super E-tutor can weave and summarize as fast as lightning
 Super E-tutor can answer 100 emails a day from students
 Super E-tutor can resolve arguments using a single line of chat
(This activity encourages participants to sum up skills developed on the
course, but in a light-hearted way.)
 A Yearbook: Similar to the yearbook in high school. Using a wiki,
participants add a line to describe each participant and the tutor
(photos included if possible), keeping the focus light-hearted and
positive.
 A time-capsule: Participants create a ‘time-capsule’ in a forum or
wiki. Each group should describe one aspect of the course on the
assumption that a future generation will look at the time-capsule to
learn what happened on the course.
 Five years from now: Similar to the yearbook idea, but participants
predict what others will be doing five years from now based on their
strengths during the course.

17.  Take it from here (Hockly & Clanfield 2010: 90) In a forum or
wiki, participants leave a brief note saying what they take away
from the course. Useful for individuals to reflect and for the
group to have a record of what each person thought was most
worth remembering from the course.
 A reflective journal piece of extensive writing: this may be
around a page or so in length. In this the learners document
their major pieces of learning and or reflect on what was their
most influential ‘lighbulb’ moment. This piece may be a
composite of ‘Take it from here’ + ‘Five years from now’.
 A review quiz: made for them to take as a review of the course
content OR as a group task for them to make to give other
groups.
 An end-of-course evaluation survey/questionnaire :
candidates provide comments about and or a grading of the
course.