Abstract
Creighton University has a 16 year history of offering online education, starting in 1999 with the Transitional Doctor of Physical Therapy program. The University currently offers 22 online programs encompassing more than 400 courses, close to 2000 students, and spans undergraduate, graduate and professional schools and colleges. The growth of online education at Creighton has been accompanied by significant developments in assessing online student learning. The evolution of strategies used to assess student learning in the online classroom will be presented.|The University's first online program relied on discussion postings, papers, and visits to campus for lab experiences. Today, these tried and true assessment tools continue to serve as important strategies to gauge student learning. Additionally, instructors employ assessment strategies made possible by advances in technology including individual and small group virtual presentations, electronic exams and virtual proctoring, demonstrations, adaptive assessments, and peer review.|A key challenge in the online classroom is the absence of visual cues to indicate students' are understanding the course content. For example, instructors in the face-to-face classroom can gauge student understanding from facial expressions, on-the-fly questions, and ad hoc after class discussions. The challenge of translating these informal, formative assessment activities to the online courses can be addressed through a variety of assessment strategies facilitated by readily available technologies. Additionally, the virtual teaching and learning environment requires new methods for verification of student identify and assurance the student enrolled in the course is actually the one doing the work. In other words, how can the instructor be sure that the work submitted by a student was actually completed by the student, not someone else?|This poster presentation will illustrate the variety of challenges related to assessing student learning in the online environment, high tech and low tech solutions for formative and summative assessments, and strategies for verification of online student identity.|