Exploring Instructor and Student use of an American Sign Language E-Assessment System

In this paper, the authors examine how instructors used an online assessment environment designed to evaluate the performance of undergraduate students enrolled in American Sign Language (ASL) courses. 640 undergraduate ASL students at a large Midwestern university participated in this study. The findings suggest that instructors varied greatly in the manner in which they used the e-assessment system both in terms of the amount of time spent evaluating student assessments and in the proportion of total assessments scored. Furthermore, students’ responses to an open-ended survey on their experiences with the system generated useful insight to guide future design. Finally, implications for the design and integration of world language e-assessment environments are discussed. DOI: 10.4018/ijcbpl.2013010103 20 International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning, 3(1), 19-28, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. measuring learner performance (Kemp, 1998). A common approach to assessing ASL involves evaluating videotaped recordings of student performance, a practice that becomes increasingly unmanageable as course enrolments increase. Although five or ten videos may not represent a problem, implementing a system that is valid and reliable for larger groups becomes challenging. When thousands of students are involved in a program each academic year, ensuring that students receive timely (or immediate) formative feedback to improve performance becomes difficult (Miller, Doering, & Scharber, 2010). Adding to these management issues is the inherent communication problem between ASL instructors, most of whom are deaf, and students, the vast majority of whom are hearing. ASL is often taught through immersion approaches in which communication between students and instructors is encouraged only in the target language. Hence, when communication between an instructor and a student occurs in writing (e.g. providing written feedback), communication occurs in a non-native language (i.e. English) for at least one party. Such communication often limits the message sophistication and may exacerbate student frustration.