Hello Teyana,

Nice work here. In reading through your research I found the information regarding self-directed learning as a classroom assessment technique intriguing. However, I did not see you actually explain how you accomplish this in the online classroom to formatively assess your students. You mention that some activities students should participate in towards active learning include debating, writing a paper, or doing research. Have you attempted to create a CAT that would have students debate a topic? I think this would be fascinating and perhaps expanding on this idea in your essay would lend more authority to this activity.

Your results were very interesting. I was shocked to see that out of 86 papers only 54 papers had references. With or without a CAT one would expect that number to be higher simply based on course instruction. This has me thinking there may be a deficiency in the initial essay direction regarding the reference requirement. What I have noticed over the last few years is that we may end of creating CATS not based on assessment, which is essentially just an additional post to supplement insufficient course direction. Just an observation.

The CAT you describe states that you ask "students about their plan for doing research that week". So are you assessing how they plan to research, which I imagine would give you responses such as GCU library, Internet, local library or are you wanting to assess their knowledge that they have to cite as the results infer.

You mention that you add a CAT in week 3, but I do not see a description though, you may want to explain that.

There were some grammatical issues I notices along the way, nothing a good editing read would not catch.

Thank you for the opportunity to review your paper and I hope that this feedback will assist you in your journey. Nice work.

Tom