Course assessment

Many course creators hear "assessment" and think of exams and grades, and decide it doesn't belong in a course about yoga or business coaching. That's a narrow reading. An assessment is any point where a student does something that shows what they've learned. A quiz counts. So does a recorded practice session, a draft sales page, or a photo of a finished project the instructor comments on.

What kinds of assessment work in online courses?

• Quizzes: multiple-choice or single-answer questions with feedback. Best for facts, terms and decisions with a right answer.
• Assignments: a student submits text or a file and the instructor reviews it. Best for skills, such as writing, design or a coaching script.
• Peer review: students post work in a discussion and respond to each other. It scales feedback beyond what one instructor can give.
• Self-assessment: students rate their own confidence or check their work against a rubric. Useful, but it measures belief more than skill.

Formative vs summative assessment

A formative assessment happens during the course. Its job is to show the student, and you, what needs more work. A summative assessment happens at the end and judges whether the student met the learning objective, often because a certificate or credit depends on it. Most creator-led courses need plenty of the first kind and, at most, one of the second.

Do assessments improve completion?

On Ruzuku, courses with at least one quiz, poll or assignment complete at 59.1%. Courses with none complete at 42.4%. That's across 26,632 courses: 5,598 with an assessment and 21,034 without. Polls are ungraded, so some courses in the first group have only a poll. It's an association, not a controlled experiment. Creators who build assessments may also be the ones who design more carefully in general. Our data also doesn't separate quizzes from assignments, so it can't say which kind does more.

There's a learning reason to expect some effect, though. In a well-known experiment, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke found that students who were tested on a passage remembered more of it a week later than students who spent the same time restudying it (Psychological Science, 2006). Being asked to recall something strengthens the memory. So a quiz measures learning, and it also gives students practice.

How do you design a useful assessment?

Work backward from the objective. If the objective says students will "write a welcome email for new clients," the assessment is writing one, not a quiz about welcome emails. What I've seen go wrong most often is an assessment that checks recall when the course promised a skill.

A few habits help. Put a small check at the end of each module rather than one big test at the end. Allow retakes on quizzes so a wrong answer becomes practice. Use a passing score only when it gates something real.

On Ruzuku, quizzes are covered in the panel below; assignments with file uploads and instructor feedback are a separate activity type. For more on assessments that ask students to make something, read how to make an online course interactive.