Chapter 4: Assessment In Online Learning: Are Students Really Learning?

Online course offerings and enrollments have dramatically proliferated, especially since 2000. Such unbridled growth brings questions of student learning effectiveness and assessment, since many of the traditional assessment tools are not appropriate for the online environment. Interaction between faculty and students and students among other students remains key to learning, whether online or face-to-face (F2F). New assessment techniques may be used to gauge learning, some of which may have application in the F2F environment. Allowing assessment approaches to play a major role in the design of an online course may help answer issues regarding learning in the online environment as well as an F2F environment. The debates over online assessment have sparked review of all assessment techniques and generated innovative methods of assessment.