Reimagining Online Assessment with Situated Cognition

This webinar took place on Sept 24th, 2021

Assessing student learning is a major challenge for teachers, those new to the profession and those well-seasoned in it. As a result of the pandemic and online teaching, many of us were forced to confront the limitations and challenges of the assessments we have been using. Many felt a deep frustration that has been purcortation for years, are our assessments accomplishing the job of truly assessing our students’ knowledge and skills? How might we change, modify, improve our assessments? Can we use assessment to support learning? Are our assessments sensitive to cultural diversity? How do we get to the holy grail of assessing real understanding – aka “transfer of learning”?

This semester (F2021) SALTISE has invited experts whose combined and ongoing work on the topic of assessment will provide important insights from both the research and practice of designing assessments. Our aim is to promote a rich discussion and reflection on the topic, which we hope will provide answers that allow us to move forward to more equitable and effective ways to assess our students’ learning.

Part 1, Reimagining Online Assessment with Situated Cognition. So called “situative” approaches to knowing and learning offer new solutions to enduring challenges that emerge when grading, assessing, and testing online learners

This webinar is organized around a recent paper published in Distance Education. It described a comprehensive “multi-level” approach to assessment that emerged over a decade of refinement in a range of online settings. Example online learning settings from panelists and attendees will be used to illustrate practical implications of the ten assessment design principles presented in the paper.