How to Facilitate Assessment in Your Online Course | Alisa Cooper, Glendale Community College

We interviewed Glendale Community College instructor, Alisa Cooper, about bringing assessment into your online course.

How would you recommend a new faculty member get started?

“I would recommend that a new faculty member getting started in online teaching with McGraw Hill Connect® to start small. Start by integrating the online text/handbook chapters for reading and then adding some Adaptive Learning Assignments. Starting small will take the stress off worrying about how things are going to work for students and the design of your class. You don't have to jump all in when you start using a new tool.”

What are some of the standards you need to keep in mind?

“The biggest Online Learning Consortium (OLC) standard for teaching online that faculty should keep in mind is that all assessments should align to a course objective. With Connect, you can map the course to build to major course objectives by adding smaller assessments. For instance, on the way to having students write an essay in the writing tool, you can do a smaller assessment in the Power of Process and Adaptive Learning Assignments that align with that writing objective. Another important OLC standard is accessibility. Teaching online with Connect can help eliminate that worry because of the new Writing Assignment Plus and Adaptive Learning Assignment.

What specific Connect tools would you recommend using?

“For a composition course, I highly recommend the Adaptive Learning Assignment tool for short assessments. These are perfect for formative assessments because you can monitor student learning and provide feedback instantly. There is plenty of content available to cover all the major grammar, mechanics, and sentence errors that challenge students. The tool is flexible in that you can break the topics down to smaller lessons or group them for longer ones. The lessons provide instant feedback students need in order to understand the concepts, and it takes a burden off faculty having to constantly grade remedial work. I would also recommend the Power of Process for additional formative assessments. This tool includes a variety of activities from argument analysis and evaluating sources in the research process to reading and summarizing texts. Plus, it provides a bank of essays, stories, and articles to add to your course to expand your content.”