**1. Introduction**

184 International Perspectives of Distance Learning in Higher Education

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Higher education has been challenged for several years now to show with empirical evidence that it is committed to improving student learning. The United States Department of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education issued a report in 2006 titled *A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of United States Higher Education*. The report makes recommendations for educational reform. A portion of a summary in the report states that "improved accountability is vital to ensuring the success of all the other reforms we propose. Colleges and universities must become more transparent about cost, price, and student [learning] success outcomes, and must willingly share this information with students and families" (U.S. Dept. of Education, 2006, pp. 4, 14-15). The Commission's report has had a significant impact on campuses across the United States.

All of the regional higher education accreditation organizations made changes in their standards in response to the Commission's report, and these changes are chiefly responsible for the trend toward student learning-outcomes assessment in the United States.1 Some of the standards of these regional organizations relate to distance courses and, among other things, have influenced the way they are assessed. Distance learning faculty are now using student learning-outcomes assessment methods in their courses because of this new emphasis on assessment and the inclusion of distance courses in the efforts of many colleges and universities to assess their programs and courses.2 The data collected from these assessment efforts is being used to improve student learning, the content of the courses, and the teaching skills of the instructors. Unfortunately the experiences of instructors in assessing what distance students are learning in their courses are not well documented in the professional literature. Distance learning faculty with this experience should share their assessment findings with colleagues who need to know which methods are working successfully and which are not, and how the assessment process can be used to improve learning and teaching.

<sup>1</sup> Student learning-outcomes assessment focuses on empirically measuring student performance, which is called outcomes. It requires that students demonstrate that they have learned the required skills and content taught in the course.

<sup>2</sup> Distance learning (also called distance education) is a method of studying in which lectures are broadcast or classes are conducted by correspondence or over the Internet, without the students needing to attend a school or college.

Assessment Methods of Student Learning

in Web-Based Distance Courses: A Case Study 187

One of these articles addresses the research needs of distance learning, and others describe recently developed online systems or approaches that assess in one way or another student learning outcomes. Oncu and Cakir (2011) examine the priorities and methodologies of research in online learning environments. The authors maintain that distance learning lacks research goals that, if observed, would lead to a better understanding of the impact of online learning environments on students. They propose four research goals for online learning concerned with learning achievement, engagement, and retention. Their goals are "(a) enhancing learner engagement and collaboration, (b) promoting effective facilitation, (c) developing assessment techniques, and (d) designing faculty development programs." The authors discuss some research work in these areas, and recommend research methods that are suitable for pursuing their goals. Su et al. (2011) report on the testing at three Taiwanese universities of an online portfolio assessment and diagnosis scheme (OPASS) that assists teachers in automatically assessing and diagnosing students' abilities in performing scientific inquiry. OPASS generates reports that diagnose learning problems and provide suggestions for improvement based on teacher-defined assessment input for the scientific inquiry experiment. Udo et al. (2011) propose a modified SERVQUAL instrument for assessing e-learning quality. The instrument measures five dimensions: assurance, empathy, responsiveness, reliability, and Website content. Analysis of the data collected from 203 elearning students who participated in a pilot study of the instrument revealed that four of the dimensions (excepting reliability) played a significant role in the students' perceived elearning quality. The authors point out that perceived quality affects student satisfaction with their e-learning, and is an indicator of future intentions to enroll in online courses. Sima et al. (2007) discuss the eMax Knowledge Assessment System developed by the Intelligent Knowledge Management Innovative Center of IBM Hungary and the John Von Neumann Faculty in Informatics at Budapest Tech. eMax can evaluate students' open-ended

short answers including a few sentences or partially solved mathematical problems.4

A few online assessment systems or approaches are rather unique. Costagliola et al. (2009) discuss an approach to online testing that enables instructors to monitor learner behavior and test quality. The approach involves examining logging data related to learner interaction with the system during the execution of online tests and exploiting data visualization techniques to identify information useful for improving the assessment process. It focuses on discovering learners' behavior patterns and the conceptual relationships among test items. Hayes and Ringwood (2009) report on the development of a system used to authenticate telephone-based oral examinations. The authors assert that the system can, in turn, be used to confirm a student's ability in relation to submitted assignments and online test results and that it is an effective deterrent against plagiarism.

Portfolio creation is conducive to developing students' skills in documenting and tracking their learning, developing an integrated and coherent record of their learning experiences, and improving their self-understanding. Bhattacharya and Hartnett (2007) discuss a system that assesses the learning that takes place during the design and development of students' eportfolios. Caldarola and MacNeil (2009) review the similarities and differences in student cheating among the various assessment methods. They then investigate cheating indicators and predictors, and the methods available for detecting cheating on examinations. Also,

4 Open-ended questions allow for a spontaneous, unstructured answer.

This chapter is in the form of a case study. It examines student learning-outcomes assessment methods that are suitable for Web-based courses, and points out some of their strengths and weaknesses as seen from the perspective of the online learning environment. The author concentrates on those assessment methods used by instructors at Texas Tech University Library in a one-hour, Web-based credit course developed to teach research skills to distance students.3 After reviewing the various categories of methods available, the course instructors decided to use those that they thought offered the greatest potential for assisting them in reaching the course's assessment goals, comprised implementation processes that promised to be relatively easy to use and not so time-consuming, and included attributes that would facilitate student use. The course instructors' method for using assessment data to improve their course is demonstrated by way of examining the data collected in the fall of 2010 to determine findings that could help identify problems that need to be fixed in order for improvement to take place. Also, the study examines how the questions in the course's assessment tests are linked to the course learning-outcome objectives and Association of College and Research Libraries competency standards.

Before examining assessment methods, the author briefly discusses background issues that the distance learning instructors of Texas Tech Library regularly address during the early stages of planning the assessments that are used in their course each year. These issues can be understood as questions that instructors must answer during the planning process. Some of the questions are what role will standards play in assessment, what learning theories underlie the assessment and instructional strategies, and how will assessment match the course's learning objectives and instructional strategies? The Texas Tech instructors' discussion of the issues and determination of the assessment methods to be used occur in the context of a structured yearly cycle of planning, developing, marketing, implementing, assessing, and improving all aspects of the course.
