Assessment Tasks in Online Courses

Assessment tasks refer to tasks that an instructor requires students to complete and that counts towards their final grades in a course. Assessment tasks, in the relevant literature, are also called assessment (e.g., Dirks, 1998), assessment methods (e.g., Flinders University, 2002), assignments (e.g., Arend, 2006), or assessment tools (e.g., Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2002). While there is a plethora of literature on assessment tasks in traditional environments, there is a paucity of discussions on assessment tasks in online environments (Comeaux, 2005). This short chapter discusses (1) importance of assessment tasks in online courses, (2) opportunities and challenges that online environments bring to assessment tasks, and (3) principles and strategies in design and use of assessment tasks in online courses.