Assessment and Proctoring

There are a number of assessment options available for the various course modalities, whether they are face-to-face, online, remote, blended or hybrid. The following resources provide information about some of these options including testing within Moodle, alternative assessments, and proctored testing.

Exams

Exams pose a particular challenge in situations where participants are on their own. The online format does not allow instructors the same ability to proctor exams as they have in class. In order to minimize incidents of academic integrity violations for online exams while still ensuring they accurately reflect student learning, consider the following principles in creating and modifying exams: 

• Allowing exams to be open-book/source. Assume students will use resources while taking an exam and encourage them to do so. Try asking questions that probe deeper levels of knowledge and understanding, enabling students to apply, assess and evaluate concepts or facts in meaningful ways. Encourage students to share and cite where information was found and what resources were used.
• Encourage students to collaborate/share questions and ideas. Students will likely work together when stuck or confused. Encourage working in small teams and ask students to include who they collaborate with and in what ways.
• Focus on solving problems while showing work and explanations. In many cases, students may get the same answer, but showing their work reveals meaningful differences in understanding. Sometimes there may only be a few ways to show work, so you may ask for brief explanations, or have students record a video of them talking through the process to solve a question.
• Use question pools. If you have short-answer or multiple-choice questions, create questions within the Moodle course Question Bank, so students will receive different sets of questions (this can also be done with essays and more complex questions). Using the Moodle quiz tool along with the question bank, allows you to present questions in a different order and add random questions, so students will each get a varied version of the same exam.
• Use student-generated questions with explanations. Instead of trying to ensure everyone answers a limited number of questions on their own, ask every student to create their own question with an explanation of how it would assess a certain topic or skill in a meaningful way. You can also assign students to answer each other’s questions and state whether those questions actually do assess these skills in the appropriate ways.
• Ensure clarity in questions and prompts. Especially if your test is timed, students may not have a chance to ask a question and get a response. It is vital that questions and prompts are clear to novices so your assessment measures what you want it to. Even if not timed, you do not want to be spending your limited time answering clarifying questions.
• Consider question formats leading to essays, videos, pictures, and other personal responses. If your class lends itself to it, having students express their learning through essays, videos, pictures, or other personalized forms of writing/speaking/communicating means that everyone needs to create their own. You can also have students post their responses for each other and assess each other’s work through peer grading. Rubrics can help guide students as work develops, give each other feedback, and allow teaching assistants and you a consistent method of assessment.
• Respect your own time. Most of these ideas take time to grade. Try to determine what is feasible in your situation, and use feedback-based or hand-grading intensive assessments sparingly. Consider how much feedback students actually need/will use. Many times feedback can be created for the whole group based on common challenges or problems, as opposed to individual responses.

Testing within Moodle

Exams can be administered online in the LMS. There are settings in Moodle quizzes that increase exam security and reduce cheating.

For detailed information about exam/quiz settings in Moodle, see the Quiz module in Moodle Basics for Faculty.

For suggestions on test preparation, see Online Test Tips.

Alternative Assessments

Alternative assessment, also known as authentic assessment, is a more holistic assessment than traditional assessments such as quizzes, tests, and exams. It measures applied proficiency more than knowledge to determine what students can do (or cannot do) rather than what they do or do not know. They are “designed so that the content of the assessment matches the content of the instruction” (Edutopia).

Proctoring

Proctored exams observe and monitor the test taker, either in person, remotely, or via computer software. There are several proctoring options available:

Additional Assessment Resources

Assessment at the University of Montana