Last week as many trades students in BC approached the end of their semester, instructors were faced with decisions about which assessment approaches to use in the online classroom.

Traditionally in trades, final exams consist of multiple-choice exams and quizzes as a means to measure students understanding of both theoretical and practical concepts. This also helps prepare students to write the Inter Provincial Red Seal exam, which consists of multiple-choice questions.

But while making these decisions, one question loomed for many instructors: How valid is a multiple choice quiz when it’s performed in a virtual online classroom?

How valid is a multiple choice quiz when it’s performed in a virtual online classroom?

Four weeks ago no one was expecting to answer this question. But today, as we navigate our way around the virtual classroom, many trades instructors fear their multiple-choice exams might be compromised if used openly on a LMS system. Rightly so, we all know that students today have the technology to screen capture, share, and retain without too much difficulty. There is also a question of academic honesty when students have the technology to communicate freely during an online exam. For these reasons, instructors have been encouraged to think of online testing as open-book testing.

While these questions still remain hot topics and represent very legitimate concerns, some instructors are looking at options to either replace online multiple-choice testing, or at least to complement it.

How about verbal testing?

In this short video, David Drury, VIU Welding instructor, demonstrates how he plans to implement verbal testing to support his students’ learning, and assess their final grade.

How to implement verbal testing?

David explained “this form of verbal testing will be carried out during regular classroom Zoom sessions. Students in my class are frequently assigned group projects requiring them to work together in teams via Zoom. While the teamwork is in play, I will call individual students to my virtual office and ask them a series of questions. Each student will receive different questions to avoid the chance of them preparing their classmates that are to follow. Another advantage of this kind of testing is it provides me the opportunity to shape questions during the session based on the individual responses. If a student gets stuck on something, I will dig a little deeper. Having tried this a couple of times, I can confidently say this approach allows me to get a far better understanding of what students understand, rather than what they can recall.”

How to assess verbal responses?

“It’s easy if you are clear on which Learning Outcomes you are testing.”

David responded with the following recommendations: “Before you start creating your questions for verbal assessment, take a look at the specific learning outcomes that you want to assess. Then ask yourself what knowledge is it that I want the students to speak in depth about. From there, it’s easy. I even took some of the questions straight from my multiple-choice tests and gave them to students verbally. Obviously, without answers. It worked great! I also recommend you create a rubric or a check-list so that responses can be checked as the assessment takes place.”

David is happy to answer any questions you may have about this approach and looks forward to hearing how others instructors are approaching assessment within their virtual classrooms.

David can can be reached at david.drury@viu.ca Or, leave a comment in the box below.