Differences between digital and in-person assessment
From The Learning Engineer's Knowledgebase
The assessment options that are available to evaluators can be different based on in-person and online learning. Each learning space provides unique opportunities for assessing learners' participation, affect, and achievement of learning objectives.
Definition
In-person assessment capabilities are the unique capacities for assessment of learners' activities, knowledge, and skills in a face-to-face setting. There are some unique aspects of the learning environment and learner interactions that can be captured in a physical, real-life setting. An evaluator can observe people's movements and interactions in the physical space, if desired. Technology can also be used to capture interaction data, such as cameras, microphones and sensors.
Online assessment capabilities are the unique capacities for assessment of learners' activities, knowledge, and skills in an online setting. The online setting often removes many cues that are otherwise available in in-person situations (such as gestures, facial expressions, attention, gaze, etc.). However, many assessment options are likewise gained in online learning (such as clickstream tracking, log files, automated test grading, etc.)
Additional Information
Some methods of assessment can be easily performed in either a physical or online/digital setting. These include any assessments that are multiple choice, short answer, or other style of tests or surveys: a person can provide their responses by either writing on paper or typing into a computer. Additionally, participant interviews or discussions can likely be conducted in both face-to-face and online settings between participants and evaluators.
An evaluation is most often limited by the structural constraint of where most of the interaction occurs. If an educational product is entirely online and digital, it would be difficult to conduct in-person evaluations. For feasibility purposes, collecting data on how a person learns from a digital-only product will likely occur with digital evaluation methods, with the same occurring for in-person learning. However, this is not to say it is not possible. Some evaluations for digital-only products sometimes occur in a physical laboratory setting with participants interacting with the digital educational product.
When considering evaluation approaches, an evaluator benefits from considering the unique capacities that both in-person and online modalities offer.
Some unique capacities of face-to-face evaluation:
- Ability to observe/detect nonverbal cues from learners (e.g., gesture, facial expression, gaze/eye direction)
- Ability to detect and observe environmental factors (e.g., light, temperature, sound, movement)
- Ability to simultaneously observe more than one participant (difficult to do in an online setting)
Some unique capacities of online/digital evaluation:
- Ability to capture unobtrusive analytics and participation data from digital interactions (e.g., click stream data, duration of activity, sequence of activity, automatic record of dialogue with between participants)
- Ability to automate some assessment/evaluation tasks (e.g., automatic test grading, adaptive testing)
Tips and Tricks
- When designing an evaluation plan for your product, consider how you might use the unique capacities of face-to-face or digital evaluation. Certain modalities offer evaluators unique capacities for capturing data and understanding how learners are participating within the experience and whether they are learning.
- Consider how you might use digital evaluation tools to automate some of the data capture and analysis tasks for evaluation. This is particularly useful by having any test or survey instruments completed digitally. Additionally, the use of digital analytics and unobtrusive participation data collection might be useful for your team to collect robust data on how and why your product is being used.
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