Assessing how much a student has learned and assigning an appropriate grade can be difficult in the virtual classroom. Instructor interaction with students is limited to what takes place in the online learning system. Instructors must design courses to create enough discussion, applied critical thinking, demonstrated reflection and other online interaction to demonstrate student proficiency. Common ways to assess students' learning online is to grade their discussion posts and interactions with other students, administer tests with time limits and collect assignments and projects that the students upload. This process can often be very time consuming.
Student participation is often used as a basis for determining part of the grade. Because participation in online courses is not done in person, determining how to calculate a student's participation can be a challenge. Fortunately, many online learning systems track how frequently students log into the system and how much time they spend there. Some systems also track what the student is doing while in the virtual classroom. To figure the amount of time a student is actually engaged in learning, rather than simply reviewing classroom content, instructors must create assignments that measure student participation. Instructors often learn from previous classes and through feedback from students and peers, which helps improve the system in the future.
The online learning environment requires a high degree of technical ability. Considerations must be given to technical limitations. Sometimes students face technical problems that can affect their grades. It is important that instructors are grading on the course objectives and not on students' technical abilities. Determining whether a student's challenges stem from a learning problem or a technical problem can be difficult. It often depends on a student's ability to communicate with the instructor.
Tests are often a part of online learning assessment. Students commonly take tests online, on their own schedules and without supervision. Instructors can't control for cheating the way they can in a regular classroom. It must be assumed that students who take a test online have access to the Internet and all the resources and answers available there. Because of this, tests are rarely the only method used for evaluation. Instructors often use a variety of methods for assigning the overall grade.