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Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL)

Online assessment strategies and practices

This page will guide you in implementing online assessments by providing sample assessment types, strategies for adapting in-person formats for online, as well as ideas for collaborative online assessment practices and final exams.

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Important reading

General recommendations

The following tips can help you and your students better prepare for assessments in an online context:

Clearly communicate detailed instructions

As online environments allow for fewer opportunities to ask questions and some types of assessments may be new for students, you’ll want to clearly communicate detailed instructions (e.g., submission requirements, deadlines), learning outcomes, procedures, expectations and assessment criteria with students in the course outline and on Moodle. Sharing grading protocols and rubrics with defined criteria is an inclusive practice that will help students fulfil your expectations, keep grading more consistent and ensure that you are evaluating learning outcomes.

Be intentional with timing 

For open book or take-home exams or practice quizzes give students an ample time frame (usually a day or two) within which they can complete the Moodle Quiz. This is to accommodate students’ different schedules and to mitigate tech limitations that might impede students’ timely completion of assessments (e.g., hardware, or connectivity issues).

For high-stakes exams online, having a timed exam where all students start at the same time reinforces academic integrity. 

Timed exams benefit from the Universal Desing for Learning (UDL) recommendation of providing all students with extra time. For example, if you planned a 2-hour exam, give everyone 3 hours to complete it. This can mitigate some of the pressure around a timed exam and can also accommodate more students.

Hold a test run 

Test run an assessment online before a high-stakes assignment is due. A mock exam, quiz or practice submission will allow students to try out the tech and format with low or no stakes. This also ensures that any technical issues students may experience can be identified and resolved ahead of time. Also, both you and your students will feel less anxiety over potential technology glitches when completing or submitting the high-stakes assessment.

Know where to turn for tech support

If you anticipate technical difficulties, contact IITS ahead of time for support. You can also get support on Concordia supported tools to develop your online assessments (e.g., Moodle for asynchronous activities, Zoom for synchronous activities).

Types of online assessments

As developed in Online assessment planning and design, your course’s learning outcomes, your context and your students determine what kinds of assessments you assign students. 

This list adapted from Simon Fraser (2021, Types) is meant to guide your thinking and help you find the right mix of assessments for your course. Find more assessment ideas in Explore alternative assignments to exams and UBC’s excellent Beyond the text: Multimodal assignments for your courses.

Online asessment examples

Type of assessment Explanation/definition
Authentic assessment Students work on an experiential project related to a real-life, professional or disciplinary experience. See developing authentic assessments.
Concept mapping Teaches students association and linking concepts to one another and to further knowledge.
Digital media projects Examples include posters, videos, podcasts or digital art. Work well in subject areas that require students to apply or demonstrate what they know. 
E-portfolios Work well in subject areas with practicum and/or for compiling artefacts that show academic/professional progress over time.
Exams-multiple choice questions Useful for mid-term and final exams; questions can ask students to recall information or can drive higher-order learning in which they need to apply what they’ve learned. Choose the right exam for your context. 
Exams-open-book/take-home Useful to test application, analysis, and synthesis skills. Choose the right exam for your context. 
Presentations/oral reports-in real time/synchronously Students present and answer questions live for 5-10 minutes via Zoom or Teams.
Presentations/oral reports-recorded Students record a 5 to 10-minute presentation and upload it to Moodle or YuJa.
Reflective writing/journaling/blogging Useful when students must learn to think and write coherently while reflecting on experience.
Research projects Useful when students work over time to prove or disprove a hypothesis; well served by scaffolding or breaking into smaller parts (e.g., outlines, peer-review drafts, etc.).
Simulation activities/virtual laboratories Well suited for higher-order problem solving.
Written assignments Often more effective as multiple shorter submissions than one end-of-term paper (i.e., build in a process for drafts including cycles of peer review and feedback).

Adapting assessment formats for online

Some assessment methods can be easily administered online, such as assignments, open-book or un-proctored tests and exams. Other assessment types might need adaptations to administer them online.

Consult the list below for the type of assessment and online options.

Moodle quiz

Convert your test or in-class quiz into a Moodle quiz with randomized questions and a time limit. Multiple-choice questions on Moodle can be automatically graded and individual students’ grades added to the gradebook.

Take-home exam on Moodle

Turn your final project or exam into a take-home, open-book exam that students can submit to Moodle within a specific time window (usually 48 or 72 hours). 

If you are administering a take-home exam on Moodle, both the Assignment and Quiz options can be set up for this type of exam. Refer to Online assessment strategies and practices to help you determine which one is a better fit for your context.

Collaborative online assessments

Have students develop quiz questions to build and demonstrate understanding of the material. This assignment can be structured as a collaborative group activity.

Short written assignment/essay

For a problem-solving take-home assignment, students work at home and submit the assignment online using Assignment in Moodle.

  • Have students submit video recordings of their performances, presentations, or projects using their devices and/or YuJa.  
  • If there are synchronous meetings on Zoom, students can present in class. 
  • For a low-tech alternative, ask students to submit a written script of their presentation or slides with speaker notes or narrative (PowerPoint can work for this). 
  • Have other students do a cognitive task while listening and then post to forum (e.g., what they learned, a question they have, one idea they would share with others).

  • If a key outcome of the lab can be related to data analysis, share a data set with students and ask them to analyze it with guided questions. 
  • Can some aspects of the lab be accomplished if students watch them, rather than do them? Have students watch a demonstration and then work with concepts through application, calculation, or analysis questions.
  • Ask students to design a lab for a specific purpose.
  • Reflective assignments after a practicum are excellent ways to prompt critical integration of practical learning.

  • Students can create audiovisual presentations using media such as PowerPoint.  
  • Ask students to record a performance using YuJa and upload it to Moodle. 
  • An online forum or Moodle’s Database activity is an excellent option for students to showcase their creative work. Students can create a shared gallery/repository by uploading a photo of their artwork, posters, presentations, or other project artifacts. This tool can be an effective way to facilitate an online gallery walk. Students can review their peers’ work and leave comments or offer feedback. 
  • Ask students to create a one-page fact sheet on a topic. Students must select relevant facts and explain them clearly and concisely. 
  • Have students critique each other’s work and offer feedback using a rubric and guided questions. 
  • An annotated bibliography assignment gives students choice in selecting works while assessing their higher-order abilities to evaluate sources, compare multiple perspectives, and provide rationales for their choices.

  • Technology can be leveraged to create student groups, collaborate on documents (e.g., a digital poster), submit group-authored documents, and grade based on group arrangements.
  • Group presentations can be given in a synchronous online class over Zoom or recorded on YuJa and uploaded to Moodle for asynchronous viewing (e.g., on Moodle’s Database).
  • Kick off group work by having groups develop their own rubric that outlines how the group will measure their own success (e.g. what does effective group work look like to us?). The rubric they develop will help them set their own expectations for guiding engagement.
  • There are a range of options for assessing group work. Explore grading group work for ideas on how to best use, design, facilitate, manage and assess group work.

Online discussion forums are often used as a substitute for in-person discussions, but student learning and engagement across the two modalities can be quite distinct. Regardless of format, three key recommendations can help you facilitate and assess dialogue.

  1. Comment strategically: Highlight exemplary posts and have students identify why you’ve singled them out.  
  2. Develop a rubric: This tool can help students understand what to include in a forum and how their work will be assessed. See the Taylor Institute’s Single Point Online Discussion Rubric for an example. 
  3. Assess a reflection activity: Have students reflect on their own success by having them complete a self-assessment using the rubric. You can calculate the grade based on a combination of their own score and your observations. 

For more on facilitating discussions, see the Taylor Institute’s Tips for fostering effective online discussions. For promoting inclusive strategies in discussions, see the chapter on participation in Demystifying Inclusive Pedagogy.

Adapted from “Online Options for Common In-Person Assessments” Queen’s University Centre for Teaching and Learning.

Collaborative online assessments

Most online assessments can work individually or for group work. Encouraging collaboration in online contexts can help motivate and engage students. Additionally, collaborative online assessments foster social presence through learner-to-learner interaction. 

When deciding on a collaborative online assessment, you’ll need to determine which kind of collaborative activities your students will engage in. In some, collaboration is focused on producing a group project while in others it is designed to improve the quality of individual work. Similarly, collaboration can be an important part of what is to be learned or simply a means to an end. Detailing the specific requirements for collaboration, including assessment rubrics focused on critical collaborative processes, will help students meet the learning outcomes (Swan et al., 2019). Learn more in our resource on grading group work.

As online environments allow for fewer opportunities to ask questions and these types of assessments may be new for students, you’ll want to clearly communicate the learning outcomes, procedures, expectations and assessment criteria with students in the course outline and on Moodle.

Four ways to support collaborative learning in online assessments

Online asynchronous discussion forums afford students the chance to reflect both on their own writing before posting it and on their classmates’ contributions while creating their own. Reading, reflecting and responding to their peers also increases social presence, an important factor in the success of online learning (Swan et al., 2019).

Tips

  • Choose the question prompt based on whether you want the students to develop skills for argument and debate, reflection, or problem-solving.
  • Have students respond to another post in addition to posting their own contribution (Simon Fraser, 2021, Online).
  • Set start and a deadline for publishing posts. 
  • Use a rubric to clarify expectations (e.g., if you ask students to reference sources or information from lectures or respond to a peer’s post) and to mark students’ work. 
  • Have students work in small groups to integrate the discussion forum in some sort of outcome or product that can be graded (e.g., discussion summary, problem-solving exercise). Students can receive individual and/or group grades based on their contributions (Swan et al., 2019). 

Other ways to run collaborative discussions

  • Breakout rooms on Zoom in synchronous context
  • Students arrange to meet on Zoom or Teams to discuss a problem or answer questions and then post their summary or recording to Moodle  

Most of the types of assessments listed above can work for group collaborations. For online contexts, working accountability and collaboration into the learning you’ll be assessing is a way to keep students from free-riding or disappearing.

Recommendations

Have two or more students interactively build a joint solution to a problem, prove or disprove an argument. To ensure students distinguish this kind of collaborative activity from one in which tasks are divided and solved independently by individual group members:

  • include both content learning and collaborative skills in the learning outcomes 
  • mark process goals as well as specific products (i.e., assess both the processes and the products of collaboration) 
  • assess the product for both individual students and groups 
  • ask students to engage in peer review or peer assessment
Grading group work in all contexts

Illustrative example

A group of students have solved a problem based on a case study and written a report, or have carried out a research project. The collaborative product is the report or project.

To collect both processes and products, you can assign an e-portfolio where students provide evidence of their contributions to group projects and/or reflections on processes, as well as evidence of learning.

Grades are assigned to both the final product and the portfolio.

Another way to support collaborative learning in online assessments is to use collaborative co-creation tools like a whiteboard to map and visualize concepts or ideas. Students can create timelines or concept maps to synthesize readings, course content or group discussions. Whiteboards or maps can also be used as a presentation tool.

This form of collaboration supports the UDL principle of exploring different modes of representation (e.g., using a whiteboard as an alternative to the written posts in a discussion forum). 

Concordia-supported whiteboards include Zoom and those provided by Microsoft; for any other tools, ensure you review the guidelines on using third-party technology.

Collaborative exam

Designed with collaboration in mind, this is an online exam in which groups of 3–5 students create questions, other individual students answer these questions, the small group grades the answers to the questions they created– using a set of detailed rubrics and, finally, the instructor reviews the suggested grading and rationale and assigns the final grade.

At all phases, the various questions and answers and grading critiques are visible to all members of the class, with assigned pen names used to hide the identity of the question-and-answer authors. 

To motivate students’ participation in all the steps of the online exam, students are graded not only on their answers, but also on the quality of their questions, and the suggested grades they provide (Swan et al., 2019).

Two-stage exam for online

As suggested by its name, this type of exam has two stages, one done individually and the other collaboratively. See how to implement a two-stage exam in the following resources:

For specifics on adapting the two-stage exam for online contexts, review this how-to document from the University of Guelph.

Final exams online

Because they are summative and often heavily weighted, there are some recommendations about final exams online that can help guide you and your students:

  • Give students opportunities to practice before the final exam.
  • Allow students 3 hours to complete a 1.5-hour exam to accommodate as many students as possible.
  • Have all students start the exam at the same time.
  • Ask a colleague or TA take the exam to test it for difficulty and length.
  • Randomize questions and create multiple (unique) versions of the test on Moodle.
    • Moodle’s Question bank allows you to create multiple questions for each question that test the same content area and learning outcome and organize them into categories. When you create your test, you can set the system to randomly draw questions from each category. Moodle can also randomize the order of all questions and answer choices within each question, so students will receive a different version of the test even though you do not prepare extra questions for each topic. 
  • Consider limiting the number of questions available per page on Moodle and not allowing students to return to a previous question once completed. 
  • Clearly explain to students what is allowed and what is not allowed. Hold students to upholding academic integrity by having them complete a cover sheet attesting to their agreement to abide by the exam rules. You can use the fillable template of a cover sheet below.
Download the template

Adapt the template to your course and exam, share with your students and ask them to sign it. Its purpose is twofold: 

  1. To provide a concise summary of the details of your exam (whether a take-home or a timed exam) and to let students know how to reach you during your exams. As with in-person exams, you should be available to your students while they write their exams to answer any questions they may have. 
  2. To remind your students of their responsibilities under the Academic Code of Conduct. 

References

Simon Fraser University, Centre for Educational Excellence. (2021). Online group assignments. 

Simon Fraser University, Centre for Educational Excellence. (2021). Types of online assignments – Purpose & fit 

Swan, K., Shen, J., & Hiltz, S. R. (2019). Assessment and collaboration in online learning. Online Learning, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v10i1.1770

MS Copilot was used to update an existing CTL template. Changes included adding transparent disclosures of GenAI use, referencing the CTL guidelines where appropriate, making the template fillable and ensuring the document is accessible. All other content on this page was created without AI.

 
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