Getting it right: guidelines for online assessment

Getting assessment right is critical in supporting students' learning and ensuring their retention and success. Online teaching and assessment in some form is now a mandatory component of the workload of many teachers in tertiary education, and one that is only likely to increase in size and significance. Tertiary teachers are increasingly expected to assess students using online tasks and tools and frequently adapt these from traditional methods. This project aimed to provide a practical resource to support tertiary teachers to develop varied and appropriate online assessment practices that are valid, reliable and transparent.

Guided by a review of the literature, the team identified key elements of effective online assessment practice, and of support for tertiary teachers to develop the requisite technological and pedagogical skills. The resulting resource comprises two components: (1) the current guide, 'Getting it right: guidelines for online assessment'; and (2) the Online Assessment Tool Selector (OATS), an interactive online tool for teachers to identify online tools appropriate to their own contexts. Tertiary teachers planning to introduce online assessment may dip into the guidelines, or use the OATS, at any point in their planning or design for assessment. While all four sections and appendix of the guidelines are connected, each section can also stand alone. Similarly, teachers may usefully complete the OATS without reference to the guidelines. One way to use the guidelines and OATS together is to begin by completing the OATS in order to identify which online tools may be appropriate to a particular assessment context, and to then find out more about those tools by reading the relevant sections of the guidelines.

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