“I’m a CAT Person”: Person-Centered Classroom Assessment Techniques and Student Engagement in Online Graduate Programs

Ang’elita Dawkins, Grand Canyon University 

Tamera Fenton,  Grand Canyon University

Abstract

Student engagement is an important component in online learning environments; therefore, it is important to understand the most effective methods of student engagement in online education. Many of the current methods for assessing student engagement are linked to student performance in online learning. Using person-centered Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) engages students and incorporates person-centered teaching strategies and community of learning. Research indicates that behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, social engagement, emotional engagement, and agentic engagement serve as vital components to overall student engagement in online courses, implying a need to consider these factors when designing online courses to increase student engagement. Using graduate courses offered by a large Christian university located in the Southwest United States, a descriptive quantitative within-group design was used to explore the differences between the level of student engagement with course-content-related prompts and person-centered prompts within two separate sample groups. Person-centered CATs were added to discussion forums within two graduate courses throughout the eight-week course period and the level of engagement with each type of CAT was analyzed. Findings from this study indicate a greater level of engagement to the person-centered CATs than the course content and creative CATs. Moreover, these findings build on the current research related to CATs and student engagement in online programs and suggest that incorporating person-centered CATs into online graduate programs increases student engagement. 

Keywords: classroom assessment techniques, impacts on student engagement, online classroom engagement, online classroom participation, person-centered CATs, person-centered learning, student engagement, student engagement in online learning

Keywords: Loom, loom video, online learning, online faculty, online learners, online instruction