Learning about assessing online learning

During the class I felt like I was just barely keeping my head above water (I was taking 2 UWStout courses – 2 graduate semester classes in 8 weeks – what was I thinking?) 

But now it’s almost over, and I will miss my class colleagues and our daily conversations.  I will miss the helpful feedback.  We helped each other with so many things this summer.  I’m so glad Mary Hopple has created a Ning (No Facilitator Left Behind)  to help us stay in touch.  I just realized I’ve joined the Ning twice – once with my “normal” email and once with my Stout email!  I guess that means I want to stay in touch :>

But I am looking forward to some down time before I start teaching in a few weeks   ;>

I have already received valuable feedback and have modified my presentation, making the table and picture smaller to make them more easily viewable by a variety of viewers. 

Then, reading others’ presentations, I got other ideas.  For instance, Hoop talked about his students as adult learners with jobs and families; I realized that this was part of my planning, but that I hadn’t put that in my description of learners.

Then I heard from Datta Kaur, who suggested that I focus on different tools than discussion.  This crystalized my thinking and I moved “discussion” into a separate page, expanded what I had written about the rubric as a tool, and made the rubric my fourth tool. 

Now I’m putting the project aside for a day or two.  I want to go back and look at it fresh and right now I am just too close to it.

I am very impressed with people who used Google sites to showcase their projects.  I just found it too difficult to work with, but so many people were successful, I think I’ll have to go back and give this tool another look when the time pressure is off.

I have been working all week on the design of my class – using online resources to improve teaching and learning.  I got the objectives polished and the outline of the class done.  Then I worked on my assessment tools, which will be 1)threaded discussion (using a Ning, since it’s the easiest for organizing threaded discussions if you don’t have ready access to an LMS) and using a rubric, 2) wiki, 3) survey, 4) blog.  I still haven’t tied all the learning objectives to one of the tools, but I’m not sure I have to do that – I think it’s tie the tools to some of the learning objectives. 

I noticed in creating my objectives that I don’t have much at the low end of the Bloom taxonomy.  I have a lot of analysis, application, and evaluation, and a major piece of synthesis.

I struggled with the best way to present the project.  Of course, I could do a Word document or a PowerPoint, but those are so linear, and don’t use the hyperlinking capabilities we all seem to take for granted.  So I created a new blog to organize the materials.  I also created a Ning, since I need a place for the course itself to take place.  As I don’t have access to Moodle (yet), I decided to use a Ning, something I’ve used a lot; these are billed as social networking websites, but are so versatile you can use them for many different things.  I’m going to use it for my LMS because a Ning allows for organized and threaded discussions, as well as individual blogs for each user of the Ning.  Links can be included in posts, and materials can be uploaded, as well.  While it doesn’t have all the features I’d like in an LMS, it will do.

I also created a wiki for use by the class, with separate pages to be used by each group doing work in the class. 

I feel like I have too many learning objectives and the contents of different modules in the class probably need adjusting, but I have worked on this so much I can’t look at it for a few days.   

Learning the basics of Moodle? Here are tutorials, sample courses, documentation, experiences from real users of Moodle, and a community of Moodle users. Use the Moodle 101 search engine to find out what you want to know. Enjoy!

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Learning the basics of Moodle? Here are tutorials, sample courses, documentation, experiences from real users of Moodle, and a community of Moodle users. Use the Moodle 101 search engine to find out what you want to know. Enjoy!

I’ve decided to use this project to get myself started in planning an online class for my district’s teachers, Using Online Resouces to Improve Teaching and Learning in Your Classroom.  

I’ve thought about using a survey at the beginning to find out about student’s level of knowledge and skill, and to also find out what student goals are.  This gives me a baseline to measure against. 

I want to come up with an effective tool for students to work in small groups, so that’s something I want to research. 

I don’t know if I will have a platform like Moodle to work with, so I need to find sources for threaded discussion. 

I want students to keep track of what they find, so I want to consider if Delicious or Diigo is a better fit for them.

There are clearly a lot of tools I can use with these student/teachers.  But I don’t want to go overboard so the learning curve is too high.  This will be interesting.

     Recently, we’ve been working in small groups to research and write about online assessment tools.  Our group’s work is posted here.  We wrote about quiz and test builders (and I played around with Zoomerang in my other class, so I could compare it to SurveyMonkey).  We also wrote about reflection assessment tools like blogs (which we’ve been experimenting with).  Further, we wrote about peer-to-peer collaboration tools like Breeze (similar to GoToMeeting, I think); we could have used some tools like this during this project! Finally, we wrote about course-tracking tools (like gradebooks and Excel spreadsheets).  This last was my assignment.

     We had 2 weeks to accomplish this task, and spent most of the first week just trying to coordinate.  I sent an email asking if we could chat, but with people on both coasts (and one on vacation up North) that just wasn’t practical.  We sent emails, replying to all so that everybody was included, to figure out who wanted to work on which piece.

     Then Datta put up discussion forums just for each group, and we used the forum a little, but by that time, we had the emails working well for us, and continued with that tool.  Datta, did you wait to put the forums up on purpose, to give us the experience of not quite having the best tools? ;>

     We had some back and forth about what the assignment exactly was, as some of us had different ideas – look at one of the four tools in our area of tools, or look at all four?  But we worked our way around that.  Paul stepped up to pull everything together, and Ruth is writing the introduction and conclusion.  Miraculously, it’s coming together.

     Having to coordinate long distance, working out the kinks, really takes time.  If we had been working alone, each of us could have been done in a day or two.  But the experience of working together was fun and helpful (to help us remember just how long it all is!) I realize that I read the materials my team-members wrote much more closely than I might read those of the entire class. 

     While taking an online class in the past, I was in a group with somebody who didn’t do anything until the last, last minute, which was very frustrating for the rest of us.  Apparently, she only got online on Saturday, since she never posted to the forums except on Saturday.  In another class, a team member became ill, and was unable to participate.  How do we as teachers deal with students who don’t have the commitment, or have external factors which take precedence, and the team suffers. 

     As a teacher myself, I find group work rewarding and useful, but group grades are inherently unfair, so I work very hard to avoid group grades (and my students are much happier while doing group work).  But all my online classes have used group grades.  Is that because the teacher wants to force the group to find solutions? 

     In my face-to-face classroom, there are some kids who just won’t cooperate.  Period.  They bring the group to a complete standstill.  So I remove them from the group and have them do the entire assignment alone as best they can.  Is this an option online?  How do we deal with the ornery?