Matching Assessments to Open Educational Resources

Mika Hoffman, Excelsior College

Open Educational Resources

o Lecture noteso Videos of classroom lectures o Lessons designed for OER o Courseso Discussion groups

Types of OER

Khan Academy

Physics lecture

Open University

OpenStudy

o Funding sources• Foundations• Support from universities where OER is produced

o Funding pays for• Compensation for professors/course designers• Costs of producing materials• Software design and maintenance• Monitoring of student communications

o Funding efficiency• OER can reach large numbers of people

woldwide

OER = Free education?

o Learningo Certificates

But…o OER by itself does not typically

award formal educational credit

Why not?

What is OER’s value?

6

Academic credit

o What is credit?• Assurance that someone knows

something• The something must be appropriate for

the particular academic program

o To provide that assurance, both the someone and the something must be verified

7

OER and assessment

“What you know is more important than how or where you learned it.”

Credit should be based on knowledge, not attendance

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Validity

• Interpretation and use of results/credit is supported by (good) arguments

• Part of making the argument is identifying threats to validity and countering the threats

9

Aspects of validity for OER assessments

• Identity verification

• Assessment quality

• Appropriateness of knowledge tested for a particular degree program

• Scalability

10

Identity verification

Ryan Ruppe

Steve Winton

Jeffery Turner

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Threats to validity

o Did the person actually go through the course?

o Did the person do his/her own work?

o Is the person who took the course the same person presenting the credential?

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Assessment quality

A good assessment• Measures knowledge of the subject• Does not measure irrelevant

characteristics• Gives a person the same score

regardless of which form is taken• Gives people of the same ability

the same score

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Appropriateness of content

o Match of assessment to OER• How close are the assessment

specifications to the learning objectives of the OER material?

o Match of assessment to credit-granting body• How close are the assessment

specifications/learning objectives to what is taught at the institution where credit is sought?

Scalability - Generalizability

o Course final exams and homework

o Third-party assessments designed for a specific course

o Competency assessments

Less generalizable

More generalizable

Scalability – Large groups

o Individual assessments• Portfolios• Research papers• Oral examinations

o Human-scored group assessments• Short answer questions• Essay questions

o Machine-scored assessments• Multiple-choice exams• Machine-scored constructed response exams

Less scalable

More scalable

Efficient assessment

o Machine-scored competency exams can handle large numbers of examinees and be used for multiple OER sources

Assessment and credit

o Even with a valid assessment, the credit decision is up to the institution where the student wants credit.

o Europe has mechanisms in place to help standardize • Bologna Process• European Credit Transfer System • European Higher Education Area

A model for low-cost education

OER University

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