UT Snapshot: Creating a Comprehensive Assessment Strategy
Not all summative assessments are graded, and even when they are graded, they are not necessarily traditional forms of assessment like tests and quizzes.
Kavita Radhakrishnan Links to an external site. (School of Nursing) designed an authentic summative assessment (based on real world problems) in her online nursing course, Informatics for Healthcare Professionals.
One of Kavita's learning objectives for the course is to "apply realistic informatics solutions to resolve actual healthcare concerns in diverse clinical settings." She created a cumulative course project: a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) poster presentation in which students conduct an analysis for an actual informatics challenge in a clinical or academic setting.
The purpose of this project is to engage students in an authentic situation in which they must use the knowledge and skills gained over the course of the semester to generate something new. Posters are created using PowerPoint or Publisher, and then electronically submitted for both peer and instructor review.
Because of the higher-order skills
Links to an external site. involved with creating something new, Kavita scaffolds the skills needed to accomplish the project so that students engage in learning activities early and often throughout the course to receive feedback. Examples of these learning activities include:
- a series of activities in which they interview healthcare informatics professionals
- the analysis and evaluation of a scenario-based case study
- usability evaluation of a commercial health device / app (video blog) in which students
All of these learning activities provide the students with knowledge and skills that they will be expected to apply at the end of the semester in their cumulative project. Additionally, Kavita offers a comprehensive rubric Links to an external site. to students to clarify expectations.
Read the full details of Kavita's SWOT project: Poster Assignment S2016.pdf Download Poster Assignment S2016.pdf.
"What Assessment Strategies Have UT Instructors Used in an Online Course?"