Reviewed by: Assessing the Online Learner Janet Truluck, Academic Professional and Program Coordinator Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt. Assessing the Online Learner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2008. 176 pp. Paperback: $28.00. ISBN-13: 978-0470283868. An e-version was published in 2009. In Assessing the Online Learner, Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt provide a very useful how-to guide for online instruction and evaluation. The book's purpose is to support higher education instructors of online courses by improving their practice through better assessment and evaluation techniques and to provide institutions with a means for evaluating online courses. The book begins with a preface that provides the book's rationale, explains how the content is organized, and defines who will benefit from the book. It concludes with a final section containing a list of exhibits and examples of how to create the assessment models outlined in the book. Part 1, "Assessment Basics," provides background information about the components that go into course design such as competencies, outcomes, and objectives. They define these as "Objectives: What the students will learn . . . Outcomes: What students will be able to know or do . . . Competencies: How students demonstrate knowledge or skill acquisition" (p. 6). The authors' basic premise is that online learning is changing the way education is distributed and assessed. Therefore, techniques appropriate in the face-to-face classroom may be less appropriate in the online environment. Online instruction brings with it a new set of questions, which must be addressed such as: "Is the student who has enrolled in the course the student who is participating?" "How do I, as the instructor, know that students really understand and can apply the material?" "How can I assure that students won't cheat on exams or other assessments?" and "How can I deal with plagiarism online?" (p. 4). The authors suggest designing learner-centered assessment that empowers students by having them take responsibility for their learning and by reflecting on their progress during the course. They also suggest that assignments focused on real-life experiences make plagiarism more difficult since these experiences are known only to the student. They also provide directions for designing grading rubrics and several examples of such grading rubrics for course discussions. In this book as in their previous works, Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community (2005) and Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace (1999) Palloff and Pratt stress the importance of fostering collaboration to build student involvement and to establish a sense of community, both of which strengthen knowledge acquisition and retention. In this edition, they also stress collaboration through student assessment. They recommend asking students to submit a self-assessment of their contribution to the activity and also to assess their fellow students' contributions. Students can respond to such questions as: How was my participation? Did I contribute? Did I provide significant feedback to others? Was I comfortable in my group and with the work produced? They also provide a sample form for peer review assessment. The final section of Part 1 addresses course and program evaluation processes and outcomes. "In the learner-focused online classroom, course evaluations should refrain from focusing on whether or not the student liked the instructor, but should instead focus on whether the course provided an opportunity for learning" (p. 50). Since most institutions require some form of summative evaluation at the completion of courses, the authors suggest that the evaluation should reflect the interactive and self-directed nature of online courses. They offer eight essential areas that should be addressed: the overall perception of the online experience, the course and material orientation, the quality and quantity of the material, the interactions and discussions with peers and the instructor, the peer- and self-assessment of the level of participation, the course management system's ability to sustain the learning during the course, the technical support, and the availability of resources. They comment, "The more we involve our learners in the development of assessment and evaluation activities, the more empowered they become as learners, scholars, and practitioners, and the more satisfied they will be with their learning experience" (p. 62). Part 1 provides the reader with some good and explicit steps for designing learner-focused...
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Mar 21, 2024
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