Assessment in Online German: Assessment Methods and Results

Abstract

As online educational programs and courses increase (Allen & Seaman, ), it is important to understand the benefits and limitations of this delivery format when assessing students and when comparing learning outcomes. This article addresses the following two questions: (1) What are some of the best practices in assessing language skills online and how do they differ from assessment in face‐to‐face (F2F) courses? (2) How do learning outcomes differ in online vs. F2F courses? Both questions are answered based on previous research and our own practices and results in second‐year German. We found that the most effective online practices are too time‐consuming and costly to implement. Poor computer literacy skills and test security can be further issues in online environments. The solution lies in frequent formal and informal assessments. When comparing online with F2F language learning, meta‐analyses give online formats a slight advantage over F2F (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, ). In this study no significant differences were found between the F2F and online sections. Noteworthy, however, is that large differences in standard deviations and score ranges between online and F2F classes suggest that online language learning works well for some and not as well for others.

Online college English education in Wuhan against the COVID-19 pandemic: Student and teacher readiness, challenges and implications

“…Lastly, it can also foster and take advantage of autonomous learning and learner corpora [9]. Some studies have proved the effectiveness of online language learning [10][11][12], and some explored such themes as online language learning assessment [13][14][15], learners' perspectives [16,17], and language teachers' professional development [18][19][20]. More recent delivery modes of online language education include formal online language courses, virtual worlds, Language Massive Open Online Courses (LMOOCs), online language learning communities and mobile apps for language learning [21].…”

COVID-19 and the pre-existing language teacher supply crisis

“…Sadly, the literature underscores the pervasive negative preconceived notions about online language experiences (Blake, 2015;Doughty, 2015;Moser et al, 2021). However, empirical studies consistently suggest that outcomes are comparable whether learners are taught in person or online (Blake, Wilson, Cetto, & Pardo-Ballester, 2008;Chenoweth & Murday, 2003;Chenoweth, Ushida, & Murday, 2006;Enkin & Mejías-Bikandi, 2017;Goertler & Gacs, 2018). The findings of this present study suggest that teacher perceptions play a key role in differentiating Stayers from their colleagues.…”

“…Interestingly, although many WL educators believe that online classes are less effective than traditional brick-and-mortar options (Blake et al, 2008;Moser et al, 2021), the literature suggests otherwise. In fact, scholars consistently reveal that online learners perform as well, if not better, than their traditional counterparts (Enkin & Mejías-Bikandi, 2017;Goertler & Gacs, 2018;Rubio, Thomas, & Li, 2018).…”

A Comparative Study of Emergency Remote Education Amid COVID-19

“…Online education has been studied for decades. Studies have consistently shown no significant differences and even slight advantage for the online/blended courses in comparison studies (Goertler & Gacs, 2018;Chapelle, 2010;Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia & Jones, 2009). According to data provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019a), in fall 2018, about 5.7 million undergraduate students (35% of total undergraduate enrollment) in the US were taking at least one distance education course.…”