Dr. Eliana Elkhoury, assistant professor at Athabasca University, is seeking faculty members and instructors to be part of a project called the Champions of Reimagined Assessment. Many faculty members and instructors have moved beyond traditional or standard exams and are using innovative ways to assess students’ learning. Through this project, Dr. Elkhoury is looking to inspire others and humanize assessment by highlighting the different strategies that are used to assess students. Eventually, the hope is to create a larger community of instructors who are interested in learning about and using alternative assessment.

Dr. Elkhoury is looking for instructors from all disciplines to be our champions. If you have used innovative, creative, new, different strategies to assess students in minor or major assessments then you are a Champion of Reimagined Assessment and your potential involvement in this project would be welcome.

Involvement in this project would mean participation in the collaborative creation of digital content for educators interested in reimagining assessment. You would create brief snippets showcasing your assessment innovations that can be shared on social media platforms to introduce faculty and instructors to different forms of alternative assessment. These snippets could take different forms such as a video (less than 2 minutes), images, infographics, or any form of digital content that can be posted on social media.

If you are interested in being part of this project or if you have any questions, so please feel free to email eelkhoury@athabascau.ca

Also, please do forward this invitation to faculty and instructors who you think might be interested.

This project is funded by Athabasca University APDF/SSHRC Knowledge Mobilization Grant.

During synchronous online teaching sessions, there are many reasons why you may wish to draw or sketch out an idea with students visually, or use a “digital whiteboard” tool to collaborate and organize thoughts during brainstorming or live discussions. You might want your class as a whole, or smaller groups within it, to build meaning with complex ideas by creating mind maps or other visual organizers. You might want students to share ideas, or media from around the web, on a collaborative bulletin board filled with “sticky notes” and hyperlinks. You also may just find it easier to communicate certain ideas, or guide students through a process, by drawing something out “by hand” — an approach that mimics many tried-and-true teaching approaches based on chalkboards in the classroom.

Learn more about a number of digital whiteboard, drawing, or sketching tools that you might consider incorporating into your next synchronous teaching session.