| The utilization of online learning environments is a growing trend across the educational landscape. Educators are now faced with the challenge of adapting pedagogical practices from traditional face-to-face classrooms to courses taught either entirely or partially online. Formative assessment is an instructional practice central to modern education (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), and involves the assessment of students for the purpose of modifying classroom or instructional activity in order to facilitate continued learning (Bell & Cowie, 2001). In this thesis I aim to identify formative assessment practices of educators using online asynchronous video instruction.;In this work I present a case study analysis and thematic analysis of educators utilizing the Transformative Anchored Collaboration Environment (TrACE). This system provides a unique vehicle for investigating the ways formative assessment can occur in an online learning environment given its unique combination of analytic and annotation tools. Three research questions guide this investigation. 1) To what extent are educators utilizing TrACE to engage in formative assessment? 2) What, if any, valued practices are used by educators in TrACE that relate to formative assessment or contribute to the creation of an environment where formative assessment occurs? 3) What barriers, if any, limit educators from engaging in formative assessment when utilizing TrACE?;This thesis has identified a set of well-supported practices related to the tools and affordances found in TrACE, as well as a number of practices that may be helpful to educators in other online platforms. In addition, several barriers to formative assessment were identified. It was apparent that the use of TrACE for the purposes of formative assessment greatly depended upon the individual educators' proclivity towards reflecting on instruction, learning activities, and the students themselves. More broadly, this thesis research makes the case that the unique combination of annotations and analytics found in TrACE do in fact enable meaningful formative assessment practices and are valuable components for online learning environments. This understanding of the affordances TrACE and the related practices of educators helps further inform the design of future online learning environments. |
