A PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK FOR MEASURING ONLINE STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES

Trends in higher education for the past ten years have shown that enrollments in online courses or online degree programs have been growing substantially faster than overall higher education enrollment [1]. There are few if any Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accredited programs that are completely online. Not only is there a need for innovative approaches and an ability to offer laboratory courses online, but there is a parallel need for assessment tools that allow the collection and analysis of course outcomes and objectives, in a seamless manner. A web-based assessment system might have more potential in terms of access and flexibility for teachers and administrators in terms of overall effectiveness and efficiency of producing “Learning Analytics” [2]. The philosophy driving the approach in this work is to allow the instructor to focus on course outcomes via embedded problems and laboratory exercises while the program outcomes are derived from a mapping between the two levels. Subsequently, examining performance metrics and taking a proper course of action are conveniently done at all levels of administration. In this paper, we will present assessment results of online course student learning outcomes using a performance assessment framework (PAF) or (Searchlight Performance Assessment™), which was developed with feedback from our institution. This paper will give a firsthand view of how student assessment data is embedded, captured and analyzed, and how the data is aggregated and used to inform department progress. The paper will also review online course assessments for two academic years.