Use Case: Assessing Discussions

To get away from the ‘I had to post in the forum so here is a lackluster response’ kind of post, you can assess discussion participation and individual posts to encourage more formal and effortful responses.

Assessment Options

Depending on how you’ve set up your assessment strategy within the course, you can choose to attach a grade item, or not, but you do have a choice of the different ways you can assess individual learners’ discussions responses.

• • Average post score: This calculation method averages all of the post scores included per user.

• • Maximum post score: This calculation method identifies the highest score of all the post scores included per user.

• • Minimum post score: This calculation method identifies the lowest score of all the post scores included per user.

• • Mode post score – Highest on multiple: This calculation method looks at the frequency of scores on posts, then selects the highest occurrence of a score per user. For example, if a score of 7 occurs 2 times, a score of 8 occurs 3 times, and a score of 9 occurs 3 times, the system will choose the frequency 3 and the score of 9.

• • Mode post score – Lowest on multiple: This calculation method looks at the frequency of scores on posts, then selects the highest occurrence of a score per user. For example, if a score of 7 occurs 2 times, a score of 8 occurs 3 times, and a score of 9 occurs 3 times, the system will choose the frequency 3 and the score of 8.

• • Sum of post scores: This calculation method sums up all the scores on posts within a topic

Note:

• If you want to give a learner just one score for participation, don’t click the “allow assessment of individual posts” button.

Assessing Group Discussions

The best way to do this is via assessing their topic opens in new window specifically. From there, you can grade individually, or the topic as a whole.

Note:

You can always use rubrics to assess discussions, providing learners with guidelines and scaffolding to see what great participation looks like.