key: cord-0048880-i4rdhipz
authors: Jankowski, Natasha A.
title: Guideposts for Assessment During COVID‐19
date: 2020-08-03
journal: nan
DOI: 10.1002/au.30222
sha: 591a7b2c7256050d2077cbbc9ecd1d42108c7927
doc_id: 48880
cord_uid: i4rdhipz

nan

Guideposts for Assessment Natasha A. Jankowski U ncertainty is the word of the day as institutions of higher education move from COVID-19 triage responses-entailing a pivot to remote learning-to planning for an unknown fall 2020. With questions of the quality of the educational experience in view (Eaton 2020a) , the role of student learning outcomes assessment is more crucial than ever to counteract future concerns over transfer, quality of degree completion, and alignment with quality standards. Judith Eaton (2020b) of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation states that higher education has an opportunity to shift toward innovation for the longer term and asks of accreditation, "What will be appropriate norms for quality when remote learning is carried out on a larger scale over a long period of time?" (p. 2). The same question could be asked of assessment. What are the appropriate norms for assessment when remote instruction will be carried out into the fall or longer and while students, faculty, and staff live, learn, and work in a global pandemic? There is no assessment pandemic playbook, and while online assessment "best practices" provide a useful reference point, not all practices are applicable to the current situation.

Best practices in online assessment assume things that do not currently hold. The first is about course design and the second about students who partake in online learning. Best practices imply that courses have been intentionally designed with clear alignment between learning outcomes, content, assessments, and activities-all led by faculty members fluent in the online system and clear on their role as learning support. Connected with intentional design are the students who willingly signed up for online learning, who readily have all the required technology in order to fully participate, and who are clear on the expectations required of an online learner. Put those two pieces together and you have the makings of an impactful online program. Yet, faculty teaching in the shift to remote instruction have differentiated comfort levels and knowledge bases related to technology supports, and students have differentiated access to technology and comfort levels with online instruction. Some students do not have a computer at home, and some do not have access to reliable internet or data plans to partake in online learning experiences. Some do not have space to work or focus on schooling at home, are taking care of family, are homeschooling children, and are dealing with changes in employment such as shifting work hours or lost jobs, and concerns over health-mental and otherwise. Some might not even have a home to which they could return. What norms do we enforce around assessment and learning in a context such as this? Should students be penalized for simply being a student in a pandemic? Should credit transfer be hindered due to decisions made about pass/fail options to support students in stressful times? Should additional barriers to student engagement in learning be included in order to block cheating? What is decided at this juncture will say quite a bit about assessment-what it is and what it isn't-to faculty, staff, and students. Further, as much as this is not a test of online learning by faculty who shifted to remote instruction, this is also not a test of online learning for students.

Staff at the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment have been examining unfolding practices and COVID-19 responses within the assessment community. It is from this examination that several possible norms for assessment in a global pandemic are offered, along with several to avoid:

1. Return to assessment basics. Faculty who taught courses that were intentionally designed from clear learning outcomes-with alignment between learning outcomes, assignments/assessments, and evaluative criteria-were in a better position to make the abrupt shift to remote instruction. A return to examine the learning outcomes not yet addressed, identify relevant assignments, and then send clear signals to students on what to focus their attention provided the necessary means to pivot. Clarity in design, driven by learning outcomes, allowed for relevancy as opposed to quantity in assessments. Further, the return to learning outcomes allowed for curricular conversations about the role of a specific course within a larger learning trajectory, including conversations on which learning outcomes students would apply elsewhere. These programmatic conversations are relevant because the learning outcomes desired by programs do not happen in a single course in a single semester. Students have to run into it on multiple occasions in different ways; thus, assessment is a means of not only educational design but future programmatic planning for learning based on holistic alignment (Jankowski and Marshall 2017) .

2. Lead with equity. Inequities in the educational system were starkly apparent in COVID-19 responses, as well as for which learners could actively participate in remote instruction. Within institutions, there was disparity in understanding of circumstances of students and learners, sometimes furthering inequities. Websites created by institutions to assist students and faculty during a crisis had titles such as "Keep Learning" and "Keep Educating." Few if any responses included a clear statement that it was OK to struggle, that it is fine to take time to breathe, or that the mental health of students and faculty mattered to institutions. Instead, the message was "Take care of you … but log in, do the work, and turn on your Zoom camera after you find a computer." Outreach to better understand student needs did occur through surveys and phone calls to students, and assignments were modified in terms of flexible deadlines and removal of unnecessary assignment constraints. However, student access to reliable Wi-Fi was not well-addressed. Some institutions offered student access to the internet through Wi-Fi parking lots-assuming students had a car, or a home situation that allowed them to go to a parking lot, a computer to use while at the parking lot, and a comfort level with being outside their home in order to access the internet. Further, remote instruction assessment policies were implemented without concern for bandwidth access, data plans, software, and home situations. To avoid further disparities and do no harm, leading with equity should be a norm in our assessment practice moving forward.

3. Involve students in the solutions. Students are the experts of their lived experience. Further, they can provide insight into how they are capable and able to document or show their learning. The onus is not upon the faculty member to find creative solutions to enable student learning demonstrations, but instead to co-create with students the means by which students can successfully indicate their learning. Faculty and staff need to widen their lens of what falls into the category of evidence of student learning. Peer assessments, reflective assignments, students with the time and interest to create tutorials or videos, phone call debates, and other solutions emerged from students in response to COVID-19. Involving students in discussions of how they are able to demonstrate their learning during a global pandemic may provide new and interesting solutions.

4. Transparency, transparency, transparency. The prior norms are effective when there is clarity, clear communication, and transparency amongst all parties involved in learning. Transparency to students involves ensuring students are aware of learning outcomes and the value of those learning outcomes to their assessments or assignments, future courses, and career paths. Transparency allows for examination of how learning connects across courses, experiences, and employment. It also ensures that students are aware of what they are learning in a given course-something increasingly important in conversations on the cost of remote instruction.

1. Do not allow compliance to drive decisions for enabling and supporting learning. Guidance is flexible in response to decisions institutions make in support of learners. Instead, clearly document decisions and reasons for decisions.

2. Do not require a higher level of proof of learning in an online class than face-to-face. Period.

3. Do not view students as adversaries in their own learning. It is not the case that left to their own devices and given the opportunity (say, for instance, without a grade to drive them) that students will simply stop trying or learning, do not want to learn, or will not work hard.

4. Do not design policy from a deficit view of students as cheaters, uninterested in their education, and not driven to succeed. Design to enable learning, not block cheating and outlier students who-if they are going to game the system-will game it regardless of what is put in place to stop them. An outlier-driven policy adds unnecessary barriers in front of already overburdened students trying to be successful.

A final note of caution for COVID-19 norms is to avoid focusing assessment of student learning solely on reporting and meeting reporting mandates and timelines. While assessment of student learning is ongoing, the reporting of assessment might take a different form or different timeline, focused on providing formative information to feed forward into planning. Reporting might occur through surveys of faculty, virtual focus groups, or phone-call check-ins.

Our current times require innovative and compassionate solutions. No examples currently exist. Practitioners are designing them as they go, with shared open resources. There will be a story to tell about the decisions made during this time, why they were made, and their impact on students and learning. There will be stories of loss and tragedies. Only time will tell what they might entail, but the norms presented here might serve as guideposts. ■

Accreditation and the Future of Quality

Accreditation, Quality and Fall 2020: A Framework for Action

Degrees That Matter: Moving Higher Education to a Learning Systems Paradigm

Jankowski is the executive director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment at the University of Illinois