STUDENT LEARNING STRATEGIES IN ONLINE COURSES

Perhaps the most promising and understudied aspect of online education is course assessment. Course assessment is important because it has a strong impact on learning and is an indicator of the quality of learning occurring in a class. In the online environment, methods of assessment can be very different. However, the online education literature is currently lacking empirical data about the general status of assessment practices or how those practices relate to student learning. This article gives an idea for future studies by providing a description of formative and summative assessment and learning strategies in online courses and suggesting some ways that assessment practices lead to different types of learning. In this study, instructors appear to follow effective practice by using multiple and alternative assessment methods, dispersing grades over time, and providing timely and frequent feedback to students. Students report focusing on relatively more complex learning strategies, such as elaboration and critical thinking over rehearsal. However, online instructors need to ensure that assessments are used strategically and that feedback is productive and able to be acted upon by students.

In the online environment, the lack of physical space and face-to-face contact between instructors and students leads to different ways of assessing learning in a class. Online, the instructor cannot tell whether the student is in attendance unless he or she is actively contributing something to the virtual class. As a result, online instructors grade for participation, typically assigning between 10 and 25% of the course grade for discussions participation . To prevent dishonesty as well as to create a learner-centered environment, students are typically awarded grades based on a variety of assignments, quizzes, papers, tests, group projects, and discussion contributions . Grading also occurs throughout a class, rather than at one or two points in a term. This increased emphasis on continual and alternative assessment methods has great potential to increase the transparency of the learning process and improve learning. Classroom assessment is important because it has a strong impact on learning. The way an instructor approaches assessment influences the way students perceive the class, the material for study, and their own work . Most importantly, assessment practices influence students by directing their attention to particular aspects of course content and by specifying ways of processing information . Students concentrate their efforts towards whatever content or cognitive skills they believe will be tested . So not only does assessment influence what content students spend time learning, but also the type of learning occurring. Different forms of assessment encourage different types of learning . 

Even the Course Assessment Practices and Student Learning Strategies in Online Courses  form of an exam or essay question can affect how students study . In the online environment specifically, it has already been shown that the nature of online discussion questions , or the emphasis on grading criteria , can influence the type and quality of online discussion responses. One way of exploring the type and quality of student learning is through the cognitive processes students use to study, called learning strategies. Learning strategies are the specific cognitive activities and thought  processes that students undertake when studying for a class, such as underlining text, making an outline, or applying knowledge to a new situation. They have been defined broadly as cognitive processes that are intentional and under control of the learner . They have also been referred to as surface or deep approaches to learning .

Numerous studies have explored and supported the link between the assessment practices in a course and the learning strategies students use in a course . Studies have illustrated not only how different assessment methods encourage different learning strategies, but how different learning strategies result in qualitatively different learning outcomes. For example, students who read text at a deep level are better able to answer questions about the meaning and conclusions of the text, while surface strategies result in mainly descriptive answers . Simple methods used to study for objective tests are not as effective for long-term retention as more complex methods used to study for essay tests . And surface approaches are found to be effective for recalling detail whereas deep approaches are effective for the development of more complex and meaningful knowledge structures . In general, when students focus on more complex cognitive and metacognitive processes over routine rehearsal processes, they are more academically successful . The learning strategies students use in a course ultimately influence their overall learning outcomes.

Thus, a framework emerges whereby assessment practices are very important in determining the type of learning taking place in a course. The type of learning is an indicator of the quality of learning, and online learning environments by their very nature lend themselves to new and different assessment practices. Clearly there is a need to explore assessment practices and learning in the online environment. However, little literature exists about online assessment practices . It has been noted that most of the literature about online assessment is in the form of guidelines and case studies or explores a specific assessment practice within one or a small number of classes . Only a few studies have taken a broad look across disciplines at the typical assessment practices that are occurring in online courses in higher education, but most have not explored how these new assessment practices influence the learning strategies of students . To respond to increased calls for accountability and to support emerging exploration in this area, more empirical data is needed about the status of online assessment. This study was designed to fill this gap in the literature and contribute to an understanding of what assessment looks like online and how assessment influences learning.

Summative and Formative Assessment

Just as learning is a complex process with many variables involved, course assessment is complex and involves many aspects and dimensions. Course assessment is typically theorized in terms of summative Course Assessment Practices and Student Learning Strategies in Online Courses and formative assessment. The theoretical difference between the two is a matter of purpose whereby summative assessment is designed to make evaluative judgments of student learning and formative assessment focuses on using feedback and information to improve learning . Assessment scholars agree that most of the literature about summative assessment in higher education focuses on issues of broader accountability rather than the learning that occurs within the classroom . Perhaps the best source of identifying effective summative practice grounded in literature comes from the former American Association for Higher Education (AAHE). In 1992, AAHE pulled its best minds together to create nine well-supported Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning. Although the AAHE principles also focus on the program and institutional level, they are useful for understanding assessment within the classroom. The principle that is most encompassing and most useful for classroom learning is AAHE principle #2: “Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time” . Angelo  describes this principle in more depth by dividing it into four complementary components: use multiple methods; use multiple assessors; assess over time; and assess multiple dimensions of learning. Each of these four components has its own basis in assessment literature. It is these four aspects of effective practice in summative assessment that form the variables used in this study to describe summative assessment.

In contrast to the evaluative objectives of summative assessment, formative assessment is used for purposes other than making evaluations and recording course grades. Even though formative assessment  is discussed and studied more than summative assessment, it is also a concept without a widely accepted meaning or overarching formal theory . It has been broadly defined as including all feedback and information used to modify teaching and learning activities . Most of the categorizations of formative assessment focus on the procedural aspect of feedback occurring between instructors and students. The process of effective feedback is often described as a loop whereby feedback is given and acted upon by both instructors and students . Four general dimensions of effective feedback that emerge from the literature include: instructors providing frequent feedback, instructors providing precise feedback, instructors changing course content or teaching methods based on student feedback, and students actually acting on instructor feedback . These four dimensions provide a description of effective practice and were used as the formative assessment variables in this study.