The awesome Diane Conrad of Athabasca University guest-edited a special issue of Distance Education on assessment and was kind enough to accept our proposal to present our situative approach to online grading, assessment, and testing:
The first part of the paper reframes the "multilevel" model of assessment introduced in a 2012 article in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and a 2013 article in the Journal of Learning Sciences for online settings.
- Immediate-Level Ungraded Assessment of Online Discourse via Instructor Comments.
- Close-Level Graded Assessment of Engagement via Informal Reflections
- Proximal Formative Self-Assessments
- Automated Distal Summative Achievement Tests
The second part of the article introduces ten new assessment design principles,
- Embrace Situative Reconciliation over Aggregative Reconciliation.
- Focus on Assessment Functions Rather than Purposes.
- Synergize Multiple Complementary Types of Interaction
- Use Increasingly Formal Assessments that Capture Longer Timescales of Learning
- Embrace Transformative Functions and Systemic Validity
- Position Learners as Accountable Authors
- Reposition Minoritized Learners for Equitable Engagement
- Enhance Validity of Evidence for Designers, Evaluators, and Researchers
- Enhance Credibility of Scores and Efficiency for Educators
- Enhance Credibility of Assessments and Grades for Learners
I was particularly pleased with the new ideas under the seventh principle. We were able to use Agarwal and Sengupta-Irvings (2019) critique of Engle & Conants (2002) Productive Disciplinary Engagement framework and their new Connected and Productive Disciplinary Engagement framework, It forms the core of our Culturally Sustaining Classroom Assessment framework that we will be presenting for the first time at the Culturally Relevant Evaluation and Assessment conference in Chicago in late September, 2021.
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