Guide to assessing online classes

Guidelines below are to assist you in monitoring your online class. How does your online class compare?

Standard 1

The teacher plans, designs and incorporates strategies to encourage active learning, interaction, participation and collaboration in the online environment.

Demonstrates effective strategies and techniques that actively engage students in the learning process (e.g., team problem-solving, in-class writing, analysis, synthesis and evaluation instead of passive lectures).
Facilitates and monitors appropriate interaction among students.
Uses best practices to promote participation
Provides extended resources and activities to increase achievement levels.

Standard 2

The teacher provides online leadership in a manner that promotes student success through regular feedback, prompt response and clear expectations.

Models effective communication skills and maintains records of applicable communications with students.
Encourages interaction and cooperation among students, encourages active learning, provides prompt feedback, communicates high expectations, and respects diverse talents and learning styles.
Establishes and maintains ongoing and frequent teacher-student interaction, and student-student interaction. Provides an online syllabus that defines objectives, concepts and learning outcomes in a clearly written, concise format.
Provides an online syllabus that defines the terms of class interaction for both teacher and students, defines clear expectations for both teacher and students, defines the grading criteria, establishes inappropriate behavior criteria for both teacher and students, and explains the course organization to students.
Provides timely, constructive feedback to students about assignments and questions.
Gives students clear expectations about teacher response time.
Contacts students who are not participating.
Recognizes that student interaction with the lesson has instructional value and therefore encourages students to participate in leading the instruction and/or demonstrating mastery of the content in other appropriate ways.
Personalizes feedback (support, growth and encouragement).

Standard 3

The teacher models, guides and encourages legal, ethical, safe and healthy behavior related to technology use.

Establishes standards for student behavior that are designed to ensure academic integrity and appropriate uses of the Internet and written communication.
Identifies the risks of academic dishonesty for students.
Demonstrates an awareness of how the use of technology may impact student assessment performance.
Uses course content that complies with intellectual property rights policies and fair use standards.

Standard 4

The teacher understands and is responsive to students with special needs in the online classroom.

Adapts and adjusts instruction to create multiple paths to learning objectives.
Encourages collaboration and interaction among all students.
Exhibits the ability to assess student knowledge and instruction in a variety of ways
Understands that students have varied talents and skills and uses appropriate strategies designed to include all students.

Standard 5

The teacher demonstrates competencies in creating and implementing assessments in online learning environments in ways that assure validity and reliability of instruments and procedures along with developing and delivering assessments, projects, and assignments that meet learning objectives & outcomes, and assesses learning progress by measuring student achievement.

Creates or selects fair, adequate and appropriate assessment instruments to measure online learning that reflect sufficient content validity (i.e., that adequately cover the content they are designed to measure), reliability and consistency over time.
Includes authentic assessment (i.e., the opportunity to demonstrate understanding of acquired knowledge and skills as opposed to testing isolated skills or retained facts) as part of the evaluation process; assesses student knowledge in a forum beyond multiple guess.

Standard 6

The teacher demonstrates competencies in using data and findings from assessments and other data sources to modify instructional methods and content and to guide student learning.

Creates opportunities for self-reflection or assessment of teaching effectiveness within the online environment (e.g., classroom assessment techniques, teacher evaluations, teacher peer reviews).
Evaluates instructional strategies to determine their accuracy and usefulness for presenting specific ideas and concepts.

Standard 7

The teacher demonstrates frequent and effective strategies that enable both teacher and students to complete self- and pre-assessments.

Understands that student success (e.g., grade, level of participation, mastery of content, completion percentage) is an important measure of teaching and course success.

Standard 8

The teacher collaborates with colleagues

Understands the value of collaborative efforts to create common assessments among content-area teachers and share assessment results with colleagues to collaboratively plan instruction that will best meet individual student needs.

Standard 9

The teacher arranges media and content to help students and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively in the online environment.

Demonstrates the ability to modify and add content and assessment, using an online Learning Management System (LMS).
Incorporates multimedia and visual resources into an online module.
Demonstrates the ability to effectively use and incorporate subject-specific and developmentally appropriate software in an online learning module.
Reviews all materials and Web resources for their alignment with course objectives and state and local standards and for their appropriateness on a continuing basis.
Creates assignments, projects and assessments that are aligned with students’ different visual, auditory and hands-on ways of learning.
Arranges media and content to help transfer knowledge most effectively in the online environment.