Assessment and evaluation in relation to receiving the information about students’ academic performance and successes in completing the learning goals and objectives are important to provide the instructor’s with the information and students with opportunities for reflection.
As a result, more effective methods for assessing and evaluating students’ performance are discussed with references to the opportunities which are provided because of using technologies (Bedard-Voorhees, Johnson, & Dobson, 2011; United States Government Accountability Office, 2005).
Thus, technologies can facilitate the evaluation and assessment of students’ performance while focusing on the use of different interactive tools. The role of technologies in completing these goals should also be discussed with references to instructional design principles and theories.
Using interactive technologies to assess and evaluate students’ results and successes in learning the material, instructors contribute to the development of students’ critical thinking skills and their reflection activities.
Interactive assessment and evaluation tools used for formative assessment are important to provide the instructor’s feedback to stimulate students’ further progress. Interactive technologies used for summative assessment are advantageous for students’ reflecting on the progress.
To choose the most appropriate assessment and evaluation tools, instructors can focus on interactive tests, discussion boards, blogs, journals, portfolios, and quizzes in order to provide the immediate feedback, stimulate reflection and discussion, and promote the increase of academic performance (Bedard-Voorhees, Johnson, & Dobson, 2011).
The effectiveness of Internet-based and interactive technologies can be evaluated with references to the instructional design principles and theories.
Following the principles of Objectivism, students learn when they provide correct responses and demonstrate the understanding of the material.
The associated criterion-referenced assessment and evaluation can be realized with the help of interactive technologies for testing and assessing the individual competency (Dabbagh, 2006).
According to the principles of Cognitivism, learners should actively participate in the teaching-learning process and the necessary task analysis and assessment should be conducted with the help of interactive quizzes, online conferences, and online discussions in which students’ progress can be assessed with references to their performance and active position (Dabbagh, 2006).
However, the principles of Constructivism can be correlated with the advantages of the Internet-based assessment activities more directly. According to the idea of Constructivism, the focus is on students’ individual achievements and progress in the learning process (Dabbagh, 2006).
That is why, it is effective to use online discussions, blog discussions, online conferences in order to provide students’ with the opportunity to present their personal opinion on the subject of the discussion (Dabbagh, 2006; Nicol, 2009, p. 335).
Moreover, students’ individual achievements valued by the followers of Constructivism can be assessed with references to the portfolios completed with the help of contemporary technologies (Bedard-Voorhees, Johnson, & Dobson, 2011).
From this point, assessment and evaluation are the important stages to conclude about the students’ academic progress in order to improve instructions and activities.
Furthermore, assessment and evaluation based on the interactive and online technologies can contribute to making lessons and activities more effective because of the focus on students’ individual achievements.
These technologies facilitate effective evaluation and assessment because instructors can provide immediate feedback in relation to the students’ successes, and students can reflect on their performance.
The use of interactive technologies and online tests or portfolios as examples of online tools also responds to instructional design principles and theories.
References
Bedard-Voorhees, A., Johnson, L. M., & Dobson, P. (2011). Letting them show what they know: Digital assessment strategies. In S. Hirtz and K. Kelly (Eds.) Education for a Digital World 2.0, Section F: eAssessment: Measuring in Ways that Matter. British Columbia: Province of British Columbia.
Dabbagh, N. (2006). Instructional design knowledge base. Web.
Nicol, D. (2009). Assessment for learner self-regulation: enhancing achievement in the first year using learning technologies. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34(3), 335-352.
United States Government Accountability Office. (2005). Performance measurement and evaluation: Definitions and relationships. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Web.