Assessment Across Online Language Education - Stephanie Link
5. Issues and Challenges in the Assessment of Online Language Teacher Performance
Assessment Across Online Language Education - Stephanie Link
Barbara A. Lafford [+]
Arizona State University
Barbara A. Lafford (PhD, Cornell University) is a Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Arizona State University and is Head of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at the Phoenix Downtown Campus. Her recent research interests include the study of the effects of social and cognitive factors on the acquisition of second languages in classroom and study-abroad contexts, languages for professional purposes, and computer-assisted language learning. She has served as Chair of the CALICO board and is currently the Editor for the Monograph/Focus Volume Series of The Modern Language Journal. Her publications also include Spanish Second Language Acquisition: State of the Science (Georgetown, 2003) and The Art of Teaching Spanish: Second Language Acquisition from Research to Praxis (Georgetown, 2006), both co-edited with Rafael Salaberry.
Carmen King de Ramirez [+]
University of Arizona
James E Wermers [+]
Arizona State University
Description
This chapter will focus on four issues involved in the assessment of online language teaching (uneven training/uneven institutional expectations, faculty resistance to online teaching and to their assessment as online instructors, diverse backgrounds among online instructors, and instruments used to assess the performance of online faculty) the challenges these factors present for carrying out such assessments, and possible solutions for meeting each of those challenges. This chapter will also include brief findings from a pilot study that provided a rationale for the focus on these four issues associated with online instructor assessment.