Week 8 Adieu to Assessment in E-learning

The 8 weeks seem like they just started but I like 8-week long classes rather than semester-long class.  The 8 weeks seem to immerse me more intensely into the material and I remember the information better.

Although this will probably be my last post about Assessment in E-learning, my plan is to continue blogging about school library media specifically and on education in general.

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The Marra, et al, article was challenging but I think I got the gist of it.  I think the information in the article applies to me in a few ways:

• As an instructor, the purpose of a discussion has to be very clear.  The researchers focused on a class in which the aims of the discussion were high on the Bloom’s taxonomy.  I think that if the questions ask students to display higher-order thinking skills, the students’ responses and discussions will start at a higher level. Then as the discussion continues and students support their arguments with data, the discussions will become deeper.
• The authors of the article concluded that both the IAM and the Newman tool analyzed students’ responses well but the tools, perhaps because of how the two tools were used, rated different characteristics.  They also concluded that the results of the same students’ responses using each tool were quite different.  As an instructor, if I were to use a tool to analyze the depth of student responses, I’d lean toward the IAM because it seems to be more thorough in what it analyzes.  I believe the authors used the word “holistic.”  If I’ve acquainted myself well with each of the students through surveys and more informal discussions, I believe that I would take the whole student into account when analyzing their responses.

Other observations about the article:

• The article was written 7 years ago.  Since that time, the number of online classes has skyrocketed. Because schools have had to meet the demand for online classes, I fear that the quality of many of them is poor.  So much more research like this needs to be done to keep the online school movement moving in a positive direction.
• Since this study did not examine a large sample, I think that more research needs to be done via a wide spectrum of classes.  How one would do such research would be the next question.
• Good f2f teachers write discussion questions that reflect Bloom’s taxonomy.  However, all f2f class discussions are taped, I don’t think that f2f teachers could ever analyze the depth of student responses in the same way that an online instructor can.  In addition, even well-structured f2f discussion sessions often result in a few students saying nothing, even when called upon. Therefore, even when I am teaching in a f2f environment, I think that I need to have online discussions to draw in the students who do not discuss well in f2f and to analyze student responses to see if they are thinking deeply about the subject matter.

 

 

Week 7 Final Project

Here’s the link to my final project.  At the home page, access my final project using the links in the left sidebar, beginning with “Assessment in E-learning.”

https://sites.google.com/site/dlksportfolio/

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For those of us in Wisconsin who are public servants, the past two weeks have been stressful, uncertain and disheartening.  As I worked on the final project, not only did I have a difficult time focusing, I also wondered:  ”Do people who aren’t teachers really understand how much work, time, thought, and research goes into the planning of one meaningful lesson?  And if they did, would they maybe value what we do for kids?”

I don’t think so.

One day, I hope that I will be able to employ the objectives detailed my final project.  But tonight the school board voted to lay off the entire teaching faculty in my school.  That’s 95 of us.  Certainly, many of the 95 will be given contracts eventually.  But for those of us on the bottom of the seniority list, our futures in education look bleak.

 

 

Week 6 Assessment and Final Project

Week 6 Survey Click here to take survey

Reading the articles about summative and formative assessment took me back to my days as a language arts teacher.  The method I used to teach writing was the writing workshop process which is employs formative assessment extensively.  Students could re-write and reformulate their papers as many times as they wanted to do so; they decided when the piece was ready to be graded, and they could choose which pieces they wanted to submit for grades. 

Another benefit in writers’ workshop is that peer review was used extensively.  Building trust among the students in their small groups was an important step and one that the kids really liked.  In fact, they liked the team-building exercises so much that they were a little miffed when when moved on to actually workshopping.  Training students how to exactly “workshop” another student’s work was indeed a difficult task; but once the students got the hang of it, their suggestions for the writer were almost always more valuable than mine were.

That is not to say that writing workshop was flawless.  As the teacher, the process was a paper and recordkeeping nightmare; but teaching writing in the way I did was the right way to do it.  The progress the students made during the course of a semester was fantastic!

As teachers, I think we should strive to make all classes like a writing workshop:  Lots of peer feedback, safety without control, and multiple assessments. 

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I think one reason why I’m having such a tough time with writing objectives is because I don’t get a lot of practice writing them.  As a media specialist, the classroom teacher has already written the objectives.  My job is to provide activities with resources and technology to support the objectives.  So, coming up with ways for students to demonstrate their learning isn’t nearly as difficult as writing those objectives.

 

Week 5 Bloom’s Taxonomy

Mod5BloomsAssignment

This week’s assignment (linked above) to design activities that reflect Bloom’s taxonomy was challenging. Designing activities that recall knowledge are abundant; finding those which analyze and evaluate are not. Then, when you add the online learning layer to the activity, the process becomes a little more complicated.  But at the rate that Web 2.0 tools are being added to the internet, the online learning layer may become less challenging.

When I was preparing for the assignment, I found this visual (scroll to page 2 of the .pdf document) which helped with the verbs.

When I completed the assignment, I felt good, however.  I’d concentrated on developing the best activities and pondered higher level thinking skills assignments.   I couldn’t help thinking about my day-to-day teaching practice while completing the assignment:  ”Do I use this process each and every time I design a lesson?”  ”Do I think this deeply about every lesson that I deliver?”  Honestly, the answer is no.  But this week’s assignment has illustrated to me that it’s time well spent; so for the rest of the year, I’m going to try to design activities following Bloom’s taxonomy for at least one lesson per week.  I’ve only been in my current position for less than 2 years; so if I continue this goal next year, the curriculum for 5th and 6th graders should be in great shape by the end of next year . . . and then, of course, I’ll need to begin the revision process.

I also bemoaned the fact that standardized tests focus on lower level thinking skills in a time when they should focus on higher level thinking skills.  If the tests did so, then, ideally, the instruction would become more authentic.  I know that some states are revising their tests; but these changes are too slow to benefit the students we have right now.

Week Four — After the Snow Day

The snow day couldn’t have come at a better time.  The extra hours hunkered down at home meant I could get caught up on my reading for class.

The Edutopia site is a treasure trove of assessment information–videos, examples, and ideas.  This was probably my favorite reading this week because it caused me to think about how authentic my assessments will be in the project-based learning unit the 6th graders and I are working on.  The students will be researching and designing webpages on topics that are of interest to the other middle school students.  (They’re in the middle of polling the other students right now.)  So, the end project is an authentic assessment.

But we have quite a few steps in the process, and I need to assess as they move through the unit to help them stay on track.

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The group project and my role in it went better than I thought it would.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t have my work done in time and the rest of the group would be waiting for me to finish.  Thanks to Cynthia’s deft hand, we have a great wiki about our tools.  I look forward to reading the other groups’ assessments.  It’s great to get new Web 2.0 tools–especially when someone else has done all of the work of reviewing them first.

Although there was not a lot of discussion about the assessment readings, I posted a comment anyway.  ”Authentic” assessment is still a little hazy to me.  Is it authentic for a teacher or an adult?  Or authentic for a child or teenager?  The examples cited in one of the readings (calculating distance using Stanten Island and Statue of Liberty as well as arguing a case before a judge) sound like authentic assessments for adults not for kids.

Creating authentic assessments for teens or for adult learners would be much easier than for, say, first graders since the former have a much broader and deeper past knowledge base.  On the other hand, mathematics in first grade isn’t as complicated as geometry in eighth grade.

I did a search on Wikipedia to see how authentic assessment was defined there.  This sentence grabbed me because of the emphasis on “student voice”:

Authentic assessment can be devised by the teacher, or in collaboration with the student by engaging student voice.

Perhaps we’ll discuss authentic assessment in the coming weeks and I’ll see the haze rising.

Photo:  freefoto.com

 

Week Three Musings

Today the sixth graders and I began a group project.  We discussed the roles and responsibilities of each person in the group and role-played. At the beginning of the period, students seemed uncomfortable with the idea.  By the end of the period, they were feeling okay with the process.  Before introducing the group project to the kids, I consulted this article to refresh my skills at moderating group work as well as reviewed what I’d learn in the Intel PBL course.  I think employing these strategies worked.

As I more carefully read the requirements of the midterm project today, I could more fully empathize with my 6th graders initial feelings with the group project.  My initial gut reaction to a group project is “ugh.”  My emotions have nothing to do with the people I work with.  Instead, I initially perceive that I now have not only the instructor to “please,” I now have to be mindful of the schedules and work habits of others.  Since I usually take longer than others to complete assignments, I’m always afraid that I’ll annoy my groupmates or cause all of us to get a lower grade.

After reading the assignment more carefully, I breathed a sigh of relief. Although we’ll be in a group, each of us has a special task and all the tasks will come together in one project.  I need to make sure that the 6th  group project is set up the same way–then perhaps they’ll be relieved, too.

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Curtis Bonk article:  The augmented reality discussion at the end of the week was intriguing.  I particularly liked the link to the youtube video that Kinga provided.  The more “real” and relevant learning becomes, the more our students will be engaged.  Augmented reality is one way to do it and with the prices of mobile devices falling, it’s also a realistic option for cash-strapped school districts.

The Bonk article also brought to mind the “conversation prism” I learned about at the SLATE conference in December 2010.  Bonk listed all the different genres of technology whereas the prism is mostly about social media.  The options are endless.

Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and JESS3, http://www.theconversationprism.com/

Inspiration

Inspiration was indeed an inspiration.  Writing objectives in a document from top to bottom doesn’t help the writer visualize the relationship between the objectives, activities, and assessments; a graphic organizer does.  For example, as I was creating the activities, rather than varying them, I had two blog activities.  If I had been writing these in a document, from top to bottom, left to right, I don’t believe that I would have noticed the repetition of activities.