Assessment Toolkit

This page showcases a variety of tools that are currently being used by our instructors and with our students for assignments at RRU.

Prepared January 29, 2016

Who is using these?

DEMN602 - Advanced Professional Practice: Planning for Resilience in an Age of Uncertainty

Social Innovation Design Lab (Group) – Students are introduced to the Social Innovation Lab model and work in groups during residency to produce a multimedia record of an SIL process showing how they would develop innovative capacity building proposals or products.

Tool- SIL, Pecha Kucha presentation model

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DEMN553 – Disaster Response and Sustainable Recovery 

Conference Presentation – Students prepare a narrated PowerPoint that simulates a presentation to a conference of a professional organization. The presentation must focus on a theme identified for the conference and involves knowledge translation for an audience of varied backgrounds and levels of awareness.

Tool- Narrated PowerPoint, peer feedback

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HUMS644 - Internship 

Where in the world are SSHS Interns – Interns use a shared online map to post text and multimedia profiles of the organization they are doing their internship in and their role. This is a required introductory activity rather than an assignment.  

Tool- ZeeMaps

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HUMS641 – Foundations of Policy and Practice in Humanitarian Action

Actor Profile – Students produce brief analytical summaries of a humanitarian agency or organization detailing its history, mission and area of activity. These profiles are then shared amongst the cohort and form the basis of a subsequent team assignment.

Tool – Word, Moodle folders

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SCC Bridge (School of Communication & Culture Orientation page)

Student Introductions – Students post 90 second video introductions in a discussion forum.

Tool – Flipgid

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IICS 638 - Contemporary Issues in Communication

Key Concepts Glossary - Students add important concepts used in the course and their definitions, or to come to read what others have proposed as good definitions of key concepts. Each student should post at least one concept and definition (and source of that definition!) during the course. Posting about a Key Concept becomes part of their Participation grade. The goal is to develop a resource for all students in the course without major work on the part of any one student by asking that you read course related work critically.

Tool – Moodle Glossary

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IICS 638 - Contemporary Issues in Communication

Jigsaw Assignment - Case study presentation (Group). Students work in small groups to read a longer case study, and present it to the class in a 1-hour presentation. One goal of this assignment is to ensure the inclusion of complete (therefore longer) case studies, yet another is to not over-burden students by expecting them to read half a dozen more books. Each group takes responsibility for learning and presenting part of the content. A second goal is to bring in examples of ways in which others have studied cultural identity in major research projects, as a model for the major course project.

Tool –a presentation using any appropriate media and technology resources

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ICS 638 - Contemporary Issues in Communication

Annotated Bibliography – Students create an APA style annotated bibliography that contains 5 relevant, substantive, scholarly-reviewed sources (e.g. books, anthologies, chapters or articles) that will be use to initiate their inquiry. Each entry must include a 100 (min.) to 125-word (max.) annotated entry synthesizing the relevance of each source not only for their proposal but also to the course related discourse that their research engages.

Tool - Moodle Glossary

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IICS 605 - Public Culture

Peer Assessment - Students evaluate the contributions and input of team members towards the final project; they also their contributions. Because much teamwork happens outside the supervision of the instructor, it is important that this feedback is taken seriously. Students are in the best position to evaluate how they did as a team, and the instructor will take this feedback into consideration in assigning marks. Contributions are evaluated according to the parameters agreed BY THE TEAM in the team charter. Students are collectively responsible for defining and the attaining your own success.

Tool – Moodle Workshop

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ENSC 407 - Ecotoxicology

Peer Assessment – At the end of the course, students complete a peer assessment of individual participation in the Case Study team discussion groups.  Questions include, "displays high level of enthusiasm", "suggests ideas", "organizes the group and ensures things get done", etc.  This assessment is being used for teams of 8 students in a course being delivered fully online.

Tool- Moodle Feedback is being used to deliver this peer assessment activity.

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BUSA 208 - Introduction to Marketing Question Generation

Generating a Study Guide - In the last unit of the course, as a learning strategy students were required to use Peerwise to develop multiple choice questions.  Once developed, students were then required to answer a set number of these questions, and vote up (or down) the best questions developed by their fellow students.  The students self-selected themselves into different groups based on six different themes, and wrote questions related to one of the themes based of their interests.  This activity provided an excellent review of course material.  The instructor shared that "the approach works best in a course that follows the textbook very closely, chapter by chapter", rather than a course where the subject matter is more subjective.  This activity was used in an on campus course.  

Tool- Peerwise

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ENVR 514 - Global Environmental Systems and Issues Virtual Debate

Virtual Debate - Student teams took part in a virtual debate on Collaborate.  Several students were event organizers - their role was to create the online format and research/share information on effective debating skills with their fellow students.  Opinion polls were done before and after each team debate to measure the effectiveness of material shared, debating skills practiced, and the persuasiveness of the arguments. This activity was used in an online course. 

Tool- Collaborate and Moodle Poll

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ENSC 414 - Global Processes

Field Trip - Students were encouraged to self-organize with others in nearby locales to do a field trip in their own area to discover how local issues relate to global environmental processes and issues.   The deliverable (either team or individual, depending on if they live near others) was a presentation about what they discovered.  Students were then required to watch each other’s presentations and post forum comments on a certain number of them.   This activity was used in an online course. 

Tool(s) - Variety of presentation tools, Moodle forum.

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EECO 510 -  Worldviews, Ethics and the Environment Fishbowl

Team Role Play- Students were divided into larger teams for the course.  These teams met online with the instructor each week for a discussion of course readings.  Within this group, dyads were created for this assignment.  One person was given the role of environmental educator, the other was free to choose a worldview to demonstrate (costumes and other props were encouraged).  Dyads (at the weekly team meeting) acted out a meeting between the EE and the participant with the unknown worldview. The dyads were expected to find common ground.  The EE and the rest of the student team had to guess what worldview the student was playing out.  This assessment was used in an online course. 

Tool- Collaborate

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EECO 504 - Systems Perspectives

Systems Perspectives - Student teams are required to use six different approaches to diagramming a system to visually map one situation shared by the instructor.  Each team member choses one of the model types, then displays the completed diagram in an online team meeting.  Each student was expected to clearly outline the applicability, value and limits of the diagram type they chose to use.  The instructor assessed them on their visual representation of the system, their use of the model, and their explanation of the diagram to their fellow team members. This activity was used in an online course. 

Tools - Collaborate

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HEAL 501 - Leadership and Learning in Higher Education

StrengthFinder’s Survey and Leadership Practices Inventory -Students are asked to complete the StrenghtFinder’s survey online, enter the 5 strengths into the database and the post their 5 strengths on the Leadership Styles Forum, commenting on anything that strikes them relative to what they thought they knew about their strengths before taking the survey. These survey results are used in subsequent assignments and to create working teams for team assignments.

Tools – Moodle Database, Moodle Discussion Forum and StrengthFinder’s Survey

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HEAL 535 - Communication and Organisation in a Globalized World

PeerWise Team Chapter Learning Activities - Students are required to read 3 chapters and for each chapter, there are a series of Individual and Team Chapter Learning Activities, designed to integrate their work experience with their understanding of the theories, concepts, frameworks and models presented by the author.

Each individual is responsible for:

• completing all of the required chapter readings,
• creating multiple choice questions in PeerWise, related to the chapter reading assigned to their team (see below)
• answering all of the multiple choice questions that are created in PeerWise (by their team and by the other teams), and
• providing feedback on questions

Each team is required to complete the PeerWise Learning Activities associated with one (1) of the required chapter readings. There are six (6) members of the team which means 18 multiple choice questions on each chapter. Students work individually on the questions or they can work as a group; however, each person must post his/her own three (3) questions.

Tool – PeerWise

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HEAL 535 - Communication and Organisation in a Globalized World

Shared Resources for Communication Plan Wiki (Class) This class Wiki provides:a repository for resources - things students consider relevant to the development of a GENERIC Strategic Communications Plan anda site where, as a member of HEAL 535's community of learners, students contribute to the discussion, design, development and dynamic updating of a GENERIC template for a Strategic Communication Plan.

Tool – Wiki

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HEAL 570 - Leverging Technology in Higher Education Environments

Summarize Important Lessons Activity:Studentsbriefly (90-seconds)summarize two important lessons that they learned about the topic that they examined in the previous unit.

Tool – Flipgrid

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HEAL 570 - Leverging Technology in Higher Education Environments

Concept Map- The purpose of this assignment is for students to identify key topics of the course, make sense of the relationships between these topics, and visualize this understanding. They engage in this activity by creating a living concept map of key topics (minimum 100 nodes) and three 200-word reflections pertaining to changes they make to their map. To demonstrate ongoing engagement with the map they post their current map at the end of each unit in a discussion board dedicated to this assignment. Sharing their map with peers enables them to explore how others are making sense of the concepts taught in the course.

Tool –VUE

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HEAL 545 - The Business of Higher Education

Guest Speaker - Students watch a presentation by a guest speaker and either participate in a synchronous dialogue or watch her recorded presentation. Instead of their weekly journal entry they will post a 200-word summary of the presentation and come up with a discussion question that they would have posed to the guest speaker.

Tool – BlackBoard Collaborate

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HEAL 545 - The Business of Higher Education

Guest Speaker - Students listen to a podcast presentation by a speaker from the Harvard Business Review and respond to a discussion question posed by the guest speaker.

Tool –Podcast

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HEAL 545 - The Business of Higher Education

Brainstorm – Students brainstorm issues and creative solutions to student recruitment challenges.

Tool – Padlet

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IHMN212 - Business Law in Tourism

Assessment: Contract Drafting Assignment (Group Project) – Students will prepare a written contract of 1,200 words by applying the concepts covered in the course material and assigned readings. Each group will (1) present their contract, then (2) at a later time, clarify their contract in a second session.

Tool: Upload to Drop box, in-class presentation

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IHMN354 - The Leadership Experience

Assessment: A Digital Storyboard of Your Leadership Journey – Create a digital storyboard which showcases the journey you will take to reach your goals.

Tool: Padlet

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IHMN219 - Cross Cultural Tourism

Assessment: Team Project – This project requires oral, electronic and written deliverables.

Tool: Upload to Dropbox, PowerPoint

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IHMN335 - Special Events Management

Assessment: Final Project – Work as part of a team to execute an event, develop strong community relationships and deliver the best customer service and tourism experience possible!

Tool: Upload to Drop box, Self-evaluation tools, Peer evaluation tools, Community evaluation tools

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CDNS101 - Canadian Studies

Assessment: Leading Group Discussion – Each student will sign up to be a group discussion leader for two group discussions during the semester. For each discussion, three questions must be created based on the assigned homework readings.

Tool: Moodle Forum

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ENVR545 - Sustainable Development: From Theory to Practice On Campus

Assessment: Ecological Footprint Analysis (Team Report) – Students briefly discuss the ecological footprint theory, calculate group's total footprint, discuss ways to lower group's footprint, and estimate what footprint would be if group made these changes.

Tool: Upload to Drop box

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ERTH101 - Earth and the Ecology

Assessment: Earth Around Us Poster – Students will create a poster which includes figures, maps and approximately one page of text (double spaced), describing the landscape and features of their home city/province/country.

Tool: Upload to Drop box

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INDS300 - Writing Across Disciplines

Assessment: Visually Interesting Online Presentation – Experiment with creating a visually interesting online presentation in a number of forms using any device or software. There are many different options and choices. The key is to be able tell a story with images

Tool: Any presentation tool

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ENMN 398 - Entrepreneurship

Elevator Pitch Individual Assessment  – Students complete a short summary video of their new venture adventure ideas in an “Elevator Pitch”. The instructor uses the video to provide formative assessment and feedback on the student’s idea for a new venture. 

Tool – Videos are loaded to YouTube and presented in Moodle

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ENMN 658 - Leading With Emotional Intelligence

Individual Assessment – Students are given a choice of writing a paper or creating a digital storyboard to demonstrate their understanding of the emotional intelligence model. 

Tool – Padlet is the recommended tool for those who choose to do storyboards. The traditional Assignment tool is used by those students who submit paper reports.

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ENMN 327 – Strategy 

Individual Assessment – students must complete an online midterm quiz that is used to assess their understanding of core concepts in the course.  

Tool – The Moodle Quiz tool is used for this activity.

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EXMN 669 - Exploring Asia Pacific Relations 

Team Assessment – Students are tasked with using photos, videos, other resources, observations and reflections to create team presentation Padlets meant to demonstrate their abilities to identify and present key themes and topics important to doing business in Asia. This online course incorporates a field trip to Asia.

Tool – Padlet is used to present pre-field trip information and by the students and instructors to gather information during the field trip. It is also used as the basis for their team presentations.

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ENMN 427 – Operations Management

Team Assessment – Students in this online course must, working as a team,  produce an “Operations Management in the News” presentation as part of an overall team deliverable that includes a statement of work, a formal report and the presentation.

Tool – Teams have the option of producing voice over presentations, Youtube videos, Prezis, or Collaborate recordings.

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WINV 560 - Cultivating Creative Confidence and Competence 

Peer Assessment on Creativity Portfolio – Students are asked to use Moodle Database to post and give feedback on each other's creativity portfolios. 20% of the student's grade for this assignment is taken from this peer assessment piece. Students have the option to use a variety of tools to post their portfolio.

Tool- Moodle Database

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CHMN 675 - Organizational Change: Advanced Models, Methodologies and Measurement

Images of Successful Change – Students are asked to find and post images that, to them, represent successful change and post them to a common class Padlet. They are then asked to pick three of the images from Padlet and develop them into their assignment, adding in an accompanying narrative.

Tool- Padlet

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ADVC 620 - Intercultural Competence and Global Coaching 

Online Facilitation of Group Learning – Students are asked to work together as a team to facilitate the class' online conversations over the course of one week of the course. At the end of the week they are to post a summary of what was discussed.

Tool- Moodle Forum, adding in other Moodle activities as desired by the students

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