There’s a lively discussion (beginning here) going on on the VLEs JISCMail discussion list around ‘innovative ways of online assessing’.  Although in some cases ‘innovative’ seems to be equated with ‘electronic’, there are some interesting activities and comments emerging:

• MS Word documents uploaded and marked by comments; Google Docs may provide greater preservation of comments.
• Ongoing submission process over the academic year managed by Moodle’s iterative assessment feature.
• ePortfolios – although Emma Duke-Williams observes that ‘mostly… they’re used as summative – and staff, rather than student, controlled repositories.’
• Awarding marks for posting in discussions on the VLE.
• Wiki contributions.
• Audio feedback.
• Video feedback.
• Peer assessment.
• Self-assessment.
• Need to think beyond just summative assessment to consider formative and diagnostic assessment.
• Ways of seeing whether learners are engaging with feedback provided and acting on it.
• Knowing one’s students.