How I’m Doing ESL Online Exams
Well, we got the news. The rest of the semester will be finished out online. That means . . . Drumroll please . . . ONLINE EXAMS!
I’m teaching ESL Listening to college sophomores, and here’s how I’m doing online exams this semester.
(Spoiler alert: It’s almost the same as in-person classes.)
As an ESL teacher to adult students, I avoid written tests (i.e. multiple choice, true/false type exams). Now, we definitely do that kind of work in class, but for a multitude of reasons, I avoid written exams. The paperwork can be really complicated in a foreign country and cheating is just . . . a problem. (Stay tuned to see a blog post that talks more about this.)
I like to choose exams that require the student to create material they are going to share, and this semester, I decided to do that in written and spoken form.
Mid-term Exam
For the mid-term, I had students write a composition. Some classes practiced using adjectives to describe a place, and some classes practiced using an outline as they wrote about someone who inspired them. Each student sent me his exam as a Word document, so I could open it and edit it to correct some errors. Any comments or feedback were written directly under the composition. I added the grade, and sent it back to the student.
Final Exam
For the final exam, I wanted to give students a chance to speak. Usually I love having exams be speeches, and I thought long and hard about whether or not I would go with the original plan of having a final exam speech. In the end, I’ve decided to go with it. Students will write their exams themselves, then record a video of them delivering their speech. One change is I will make the time requirement shorter, because I don’t want there to be any difficulties in sending large files. I’ll be able to watch the video, and send back the grade and feedback in a Word document!
You know, if there’s anything this quarantine has taught me, it’s that online learning can be really effective. And, if you set things up properly and really thinking about how to tweak things, online learning can work really smoothly!
This post was short, sweet, and to-the-point, but that’s kind of been my motto during this entire semester of online teaching!