Assessment in E-Learning

This week’s reading focused on discussion boards.  I had posted information regarding the “lurkers” and “wait time” as these were the two areas I found most intriguing.  Neuza shared his experience with me in having a student or group of students prepare the summary in a Wordle.  I think this is a terrific idea, as one of the courses I teach is in the Instructional Assistant program preparing the students to be assist the lead teachers in the PK-12 classroom.  I will try it in the fall offering to see how it goes.

Although I have not received feedback from the instructor regarding my previous project, I do believe I am finished.  I have modified some verbiage, added two images to the conclusion, and rewrote all my learning objectives.  Here is my Final Project.  You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader version 9 to view the project.

This has been an excellent learning journey in assessment.  Assessment is so much more than the multiple choice tests we had when I was first in school.  Learning has changed over the years to a student-centered classroom with more application of the learning for assessment purposes.  The growth of the web, the social networks, and web 2.0 tools has really revitalized and expanded the classroom and the assessments.

Well, this week was brain draining for me.  I thought and thought and thought, wrote, and wrote, and wrote, then trashed everything and started again.  For my final project I choose the Technology and Media Resources course in the Instructional Assistant program.  The course competencies have been modified and WI Technical College Board approved.  This means that the next offering, Fall 2010, must reflect the changes.  So I have known about this for a while now and have been thinking about the assessments and learning activities but had nothing down on paper.  I got hung up on the course competencies and completely overlooked the term: learning objectives.  I appreciated the feedback in the discussion board for the learning objectives as it sparked me back to reality and the requirements for this assessment.

Here is my Final Project.  I used Adobe Acrobat Professional and its portfolio feature to create the project.

My final project will be for the Technology and Media Resources course in the Instructional Assistant program.  I am making slow progress in written format but in my head the battles have almost concluded as to what I want to do.  The course competencies had been modified last spring and received final approval in fall 2009 so I have been thinking about the competencies for a while now; I just have not made the formal plan.  Luckily this assessment course has a deadline as well as the approaching fall 2010 offering of the course deadline.  I have the Bloom’s taxonomy chart posted in the discussion board for the course and also below.  Since my College and 14 of the 16 WI Technical Colleges use Blackboard the assessments are tied typically to Blackboard.  So rather than using another web tool, I plan to use Adobe Acrobat Professional to create a portfolio file.  I am hoping that is okay.

This week in the course we developed an online pre-course survey.  I choose to do mine in Zoomerang which seemed easy to use and easy to view user results. I do plan to use the pre-course survey in the course as it is a completely online course that teaches the students about technology.  The survey included open-ended questions that will help me as the instructor learn the technology skills of the students, the student intentions for the semester, and the student plans to meet the course requirements.

Cybercoaching was the discussion topic this week.  I think it is valid and is really beneficial to the adult learners.  Everyone in life wants one do-over or another.  Cybercoaching really allows that do-over opportunity.  By having fellow students and the instructor comment on preliminary work it provides the student feedback and time to make modifications prior to the final submission of the assessment.  It is the dialogue that provides the most learning to the student receiving the feedback as well as the readers providing the suggestions.

The link below asks  10 questions regarding online learning, student exposure to the online environment, student technology skill level, and what I can do to assist the learner in achieving course success. 

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB22A8WRP9DJW

This week we focused on learning objectives and activities as they relate to Bloom’s taxonomy.  The goal of educators is to focus learning on higher-levels through questioning techniques and assessments.  We want learners to be critical thinkers, creative, innovative, problem solvers, and good communicators.  All of this relies on having learners practice these skills.  Learners need time to work in groups, activities that are more open-ended, and options regarding assessments and activities.  Educators need to write learning objectives that lend themselves to higher order activities. 

Casey’s course really made me reflect on course development.  We want courses to be rigorous, but what does that mean?  Having a myriad of learning objectives that do not get at skills that are desirable in the workforce or allow for growth to the next level of education are not helpful.  We need to focus on the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.  We need to establish the baseline but spend the majority of the time on the upper tier.  As educators we should develop meaningful activities to allow learners to work on the lifelong skills and are not just “busy work.”  The new Bloom’s taxonomy really helps us focus on developing the well-rounded, creative, diverse learners and the development of a learner-centered classroom.

With the development of the web 2.0 tools, Bloom’s has been easier to implement in the online modality.  The learners have technology choices that are easier to use and all web based.  The “Bloom’s Taxonomy Blooms Digitally” article provides options to add technology related activities at the upper levels of Bloom’s without taking away from the true learning objective.  This article identifies learning activities and assessments that educators can add to their toolboxes.

My team’s (Jason, Brenda, Sue Z) collaborative assessment toolbox can be found on the wiki: http://assessment-tools.wikispaces.com/

I learned so much this week from the collaborative midterm project.  Jason graciously created a wiki for my team using WikiSpaces.  I was challenged with the wiki and collaboration. 

Some of the challenges began with this assignment starting in week 3.  I could see in D2L that Jason was online but could not get the chat to work properly in D2L nor could I get Jason’s attention.  I just wanted to talk to work out some of the details of the project! Ugh!  Well, that was resolved with the wiki that our team worked on. 

Getting our other team member’s attention was another challenge.  Getting Outlook on an iPhone does not work and many of us have multiple e-mail accounts, so remembering to check the Stout e-mail was another factor.  E-mail is time consuming so I learned that if you do not want to use the Stout e-mail to communicate, let the team members know.

Our first page on the wiki for our team became ugly fast as we struggled to communicate – on the page or in the discussion?  So we typically posted in both places – another time waster.  Once we got a communication system worked out, our team worked together quite nicely.  We were able to modify one another’s work on the introduction, collaborative tools page, and conclusion.  I thought everyone contributed to the overall professionalism of the project.

Things I learned –

• Guidelines for working on the wiki collaboratively need to be setup right away.  Figure out the guidelines so the work can be done.
• Creating consistency on pages when everyone has their own ideas is tough, but again, creating a set of guidelines is the solution.
• Three heads are better than one.  As our team was a team of three.  I learned information from each one of them and believe our final product will be the best it can be due to the knowledge sharing of all of us.
• How to add an Excel Spreadsheet Google Doc widget to WikiSpaces.  I was tasked with completing the page on Course Tracking Tools choosing Excel.  To provide sample Excel options I used the Google Doc widget in WikiSpaces as well as public links to Excel Spreadsheets in Google Docs

Vyew web conference tool was an interesting experience.  Unfortunately, Katie’s audio kept cutting in and out on my receiving end so we resorted to text which is not as quick.  Luckily, both Jason and I were in the Vyew site together and were able to work through some issues with the midterm project.  Again, having the synchronous chat is a huge benefit to working together.  I had not seen Vyew before but can now add it to my toolbox for an additional option in web conferencing.

 All-in-all it was a good learning week for me.

Wow! There are too many tools available to know them all and be good at each of them (in reference to Dr. Bonk’s The Perfect E-Storm).  I think we need to find the best options for our learners, find out what industry is using in our program fields, and also look to the future and see what direction work-teams is going.  I found it interesting that lecture capture systems which allows for video streaming is such a growing field ($4.5 billion market by 2007, Bonk).  We just purchased Camtasia Relay and are about to start a pilot group using this software to capture the instructors “lecture” time.  At the technical college we strive for involving the learners, having them apply their knowledge, and create something in their program.  I am very curious how the lecture capture system will work when we use active lecture, applications, group work, and additional learner-centered techniques, not the sit-and-get teacher-led instruction model.

Additionally, this week I was reminded of the concept map technique, also referred to as mind mapping.  This is a way for visual learners to make sense of the concepts and show connections of concepts taught in classes or presented to them during a conference.  I do know from experience that a concept map really only works for the person creating it (unless it was developed as a team effort).  We can use it as an assessment to be sure all major concepts were connected by the learners, but you really do not want to give a concept map to the learners at the beginning of a unit and hope that their brain works the same as yours.  It does not work.  In one of my graduate classes we needed to develop mind maps and present them to class.  For the learners in the course, in particular a couple of ADHD learners, the mind maps of others made no sense to them, even after an explanation.   I do believe the mind maps are personal to the developer.  However, I have seen success with using mind maps as a way to get to know one other better.  One technique is to have the learners all develop a mind map about themselves, post them all, and then have the learners guess which mind map belongs to which student.  This is a fun technique that allows the students to learn more about one another and grow the sense of community in the class.

Our instructors are required to complete 7 certification courses for employment.  One of the certification courses is Educational Psychology which is taught online.  I included 2 of the competencies for the course and how the assessments tie to the competencies. (Click on the image to see larger view.)

Concept Map for 2 competencies in Educational Psychology certification course