Keynote – Designing Assessment, Assessing Instructional Design: From Pedagogical Concepts to Practical Applications


Assessment plays a vital role in delivering, evaluating, monitoring, improving and shaping learning experiences on the Web, at the desk and in the classroom. In the process of orchestrating educational technologies instructional designers are often confronted with the challenge of designing or deploying creative and authentic assessment techniques. The talk provides examples of the conceptual development and implementation of assessment approaches in three different areas:

• Needs Assessment: At the outset of an instructional design project, we work with stakeholders to gather data that helps us to reach the audience effectively and design user-friendly interfaces. Typical techniques are focus groups, surveys, qualitative interviews, personas and scenarios.
• Impact Assessment: Once the program or project is launched, we seek to understand how learners access online material or move through the curriculum, which helps us improve their experience. Data sources comprise Web analytics, social media metrics, learning analytics, surveys and interviews.
• Classroom Assessment: In the classroom, we aim to implement assessment techniques that support students’ critical thinking abilities and transfer learning skills. This includes peer-to-peer assessment, rubrics, portfolios and problem-based learning.

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Stefanie Panke, Ph.D., is an Instructional Analyst at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her current position she conducts instructional design projects that center on assessment and emerging technologies, in particular online publishing, e-books, conceptual web development, portfolios and rubrics. Prior to her current position she worked as Director of E-Learning at Ulm University, Germany. Stefanie holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Bielefeld. In 2009, she completed her thesis on the information design of educational websites. During her PhD, Stefanie was a researcher at the Knowledge Media Research Center in Tübingen, Germany, where her team developed an award-winning portal on e-learning in higher education. Stefanie is passionate about applied research in the field of educational technology. Her interests comprise online learning in higher education, knowledge management in networked environments and informal learning with open educational resources. She serves as a member of several program committees (ED-MEDIA, E-LEARN, SITE), as a reviewer for e-journals (i.e. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning), and as editor for social software at the Educational Technology and Change Journal.