E-assessment course: Final Project

The final project was develop on Wikispace and can be seen directly on http://e-learningcourse-fde-ieul.wikispaces.com/
It was a very interesting project to develop not only for the need to think about a course structure to function online but also for having to defined the students activities and the respective assessment tool to be used. The need for logic and coherence between learning objectives, activities and assessment tools is difficult to satisfy but also very important to achieve.
It was also a very important experience to create a rubric for each project. I have no experience in it, it is used in our educational system but I truly see it as very useful for students and, therefore, a requisite that teachers must get use to create and developed.

Pre-course survey

Developed on zoomerang this survey aims to collect some relevant information about students previous experiences and expectations about E-learning: theoretical perspectives and practical methods course.
All the information is totaly anonymous and confidencial.

Click Here to take survey

Cyber-coaching model: powerfull ideias to use on an online course

Coaching can be defined as a tutorial function of monitoring student progress in
order to provide feedback for improvement. It is materialized on the process of giving feedback in order to develop performance, confidence and awareness of the learning processes (Peterson, 2005).

Cybercoaching techniques focus on students’ continuous personal success and promoted the development of not only specifical, but also, transferable skills. It is built around a (online) close relationship that in cyclical sequences promotes effectiveness of performance. It requires equity and excellence of instruction, personalized feedback, quality of communication, quality and frequency of assessment, countinuous professional development, increased research about students expectations and ambitions, formative assessment, promotion of self-regulation and awareness of learning processes.

In summary what does cyber-coaching model highlights as important to notice and properly apply in an online course:
. work in order to give students continuous and just-in-time feedback, focused on progresses and not on faults, and explicitly useful (not nice but empty feedback) about what need to be done in order to get real improvements,
. see feedback and assessment as a two-way road, which can help students to improve but it can also help instructors to become more effective,
. promote personal reflection and self-regulation of learning,
. provide clear, analytical and objectives related rubrics
. foment activities where higher-order and transferable skills can be applied and developed;
. design flexible and personally meaning activities,
. don’t’ neglect students’ motivation and satisfaction.

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Reference: Petersen, N. J. (2005). Cybercoaching: Rubrics, feedback, & metacognition, oh my! Paper presented at E.C. Moore Symposium on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Indiana University: February, 25.

Analyzing Khalsa & Casey Courses

Focusing on activities the main differences between the 2 courses:

. Khalsa’ course is more focused on Continual Feedback about students’ progress and Personal reflection. The two concepts present to be 2 key-words in cyber-coaching process. In Khalsa’ course structure feedback and reflection are clearly enunciated as the keys element. Those are promoted in the Journaling activities. If we look at Casey’ course and use Acrobat Adobe “Find” tool and look up for the word ‘feedback’ we found out that it just doesn’t appear anywhere.

. Khalsa’ course express learning objectives that are focused on promoting opportunities for the development of higher-order skills in Blooms’ taxonomy, than Casey’ course. Looking for evidences is important. If we analyze Khalsa’ course goals we found, in greater quantity, verbs as “discover and discuss… evaluate… reflect and rethink…create… consolidate”(Khalsa, 2001, p.21). And if we do the same in Casey course learning objectives we found, mostly, verbs as “recognize and understand.. apply… seek… explore’ (Casey, 2004, p. 24-25).

. In Khalsa’ course there is a diagnostic-evaluation of students’ initial intentions, objectives and expectations, which reveals a profound concern of working in order to relate and stay near those intentions, objectives and expectations. That concern doesn’t seem to be present on Casey’ course.

. In Khalsa’ course it is clearly expressed the concern with students’ satisfaction and motivation, which are also truly relevant aspect in a cyber-coaching model. It can be seen in activities where students are stimulated to publish their products and ideas in online spaces where it can be read and comment by thousand of web-user. Other evidence of Khalsa’ concern about providing Flexible and personally meaning activities and project where students can develop their personal area of interest (e.g. photography).

If Bloom was still alive

When we look to the work of a truly historical-relevant author, as Piaget, Bruner, Dewey or Bloom, we can find a lot of articles, books about the revision, evolution, up-dating of their work because times goes by and they couldn't be able to still be with us and analyze todays' reality with their clear eyes and brilliant minds.

Well I think that if Bloom was still alive today he would be very pleased with Andrew Churches Work.

Plagiarism

What is it?
Plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward. It is related to:
. to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
. to use (another's production) without crediting the source
. to commit literary theft
. to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
[Plagiarism.org]

About it, let me post a controversial idea:
When a student copies other persons ‘work and assumes it as being his own, the teachers do have some fault in it.

I think that when teachers presents assignment proposals that make possible for students to go online and found a paper that answer perfectly to it, it is part of teachers fault that his student makes plagiarism.
I see as part of today’s teachers work to:
. create activities than do not promote plagiarism (How do we expect when we say to students: For today’s homework go online and explain the reasons behind Civil War!”
If we look and Blooms’ taxonomy we found that types of activities that relate to higher order levels skills (as analyze, classify, connect, explain, infer, combine, integrate, plan, create, design or formulate) do contribute to prevent plagiarism.
. clarify the concept of Copy rights, Plagiarism and intellectual property and justify why it can’t be accepted and what are its effects on author
. clearly identify the consequences defined in the law to plagiarism behavior and what will you do if you find it in your classroom
. show some (not all) of the strategies and systems that can be used to detect fraud.

The only way to find plagiarism is to prevent it!

Critical Education Vs Doutrination

“Are students unaware or are they simply brainwashed by a conservative government that is quietly but systematically taking away the rights of American citizens under the guise of protecting people from terrorism? Is the government selling the idea of protecting people by taking away rights to which students do not even realize they are entitled?” (Christine Casey)

This is stepping into a very risky zone. How do you protect people from being brainwashed by a conservative government with taking the risk of making those people being brainwashed by a stiffer opposition?’

Because no teacher is totally 'apolitical' and because his convictions are part of who he is, such this type of reflection be part of classrooms? Isn't anti-doutrination a kind of doutrination?
I don’t think that we promote students ability to deeply research and persecute the ‘real true’ just by saying “What you have been told, our reality is a lie, someone is lying to you. Use your freedom and power of expression and found what is hidden because what can be seen is not the truth.”

If Casey’s Class went online: 2 ideas

Just like in F2F classroom, in online learning environments, when you go late on your tasks you get advantage of having the opportunity of seeing everyone good ideas but the demanding for still being creative increases dramatically.
Most of you have given very good ideas for transforming the Caseys’ Journalism Course into an interesting online course. I loved the idea of using online discussion groups and online collaboration tools, like wikis, going to virtual field trips, exploring videos in streaming online systems (like Youtube), create presentations (with Glogster) or commercials.

I would like just to complement all your ideas with 2 more:
1) Inverse Blooms’ taxonomy
Sometimes it can be interesting to inverse Blooms’ taxonomy and to start with activities that explore higher order thinking skills and move back to lower skills. Because in real world, in very often in virtual environments, things do not happen in that specifically organized crescent order. And students need to be able to, sometimes, create, invent, construct, evaluate from scratch.
For example if you say to a student “Watch this piece of Fahrenheit 9/11 and answer to the question “How do the three basic defenses against libel suits work with such films that seem to slant the truth? in the discussion board”. You don’t need to guarantee that he totally understand the difference and the true meaning of libel, privacy, ethics and taste.

It can be difficult for smaller children but I always love the idea presented by Bruner that we can teach everything even Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, to a small children as long as we know how to structure the information in simple unit and, based on it, create new propositions.

2) Go international
One of my favorite aspects of www is its internationalization. In the internet I am all around the world. Also I like to see the online learning not just as one way for having access to new courses and materials but also as a way of develop things and do things that would be very difficult to do in the traditional classroom- approach .
Therefore, I think that in an online course Casey could promote that her students ‘go international’. This means, for example:
. research for journal articles, news, political speeches from different countries (make them think about the important of select reliability of the information that is found on trustworthy fonts all over the world);
. make students analyze legislation that regulates journalists in different countries and reflect on its implications if it was applied in the USA
. make them find, contact and online interview (through Skype) journalist of prestigious newspapers, not only in the USA but also in China, UK, India, South Africa, … make them create an script for the interview, applying in it the knowledge acquired about code of and then publish the interview (on Wordpress)
. find out another Journalism Class, let’s say, in other USA state or even in Mexico, Canadá, Germany, and develop an online collaborative project with that course instructor where both classes could discuss together the documentary “Media Hype: When News Coverage Goes Too Far” and then also collaboratively write (in a Wiki tool) a synthesis of a (collective) statement about it.

The power of ICT

“In the short term, we always overstate the effects of new technologies. But in the long run, we always understate them. (Veen & Vrakking, 2006)

Blooms' Taxonomy

Applying Blooms' taxonomy to Christine Casey's Journalism Course

Group 1: Assessment tools

Although we were only 2, we were able to collect a good quantity of tools.

See them here: http://newassessmentapproaches.wikispaces.com/

Reflecting about incertanty

Looking for all that online surveys systems and exams-building software made me think about the urgence of change and the incertanty of the future.
Today the space of learning is here, anywhere, and the time to learn is today and always. Technological changes are becoming more and more fast and full of opportunities but also unpredictable and full of uncertainties.

The future learning environments will necessarily be open and flexible, interactive, combining different modes and styles of learning and that requires that evaluation methods will also be it. We need to propose to students broader approaches to learning and assessment. We need to prepare them to deal with world uncertainties, to be adaptative and to deal with ambiguity and diversity and in order to do that we need to let them experiment diverse learning tasks and diverse assessment tools.

Diverse tools = systemic assessment approaches

Todays’ reality requires a shifting in assessment paradigms. Schools and employment have being gaining the notion that academic knowledge and performance based tests don’t necessarily give the best evidence about learners’ skills and competences to act in real-world situations.
Simultaneously, the internet was been presenting different software and web-based tools that can be used to support different learning activities and, consequently, different methods of evaluation and assessment: Quiz & test builders, Reflection Assessment tools, Peer – to – peer collaboration tools, Course tracking tools
The approaches for learners’ assessment and the tools to do that have been changing and multiplying yet few differences can be found in classroom assessment practices, both in schools and university contexts.

"It's a system of assessment, not a single instrument " (Ann Cook)

But for the future assessment practices a systemic approach is necessary. Systemic assessment refer to 4 aspect on assessment:
. what is assessed = in a systemic assessment approach there is not only knowledge that is assessed, it is also skills, learning processes, developed products, teaching methods, courses structures, collective progresses and individual pathways.
. who is assessed = in a systemic assessment approach there is not only students performances that are assessed. Teachers, resources, teaching strategies, courses and institutions are also assessed;
. how assessment takes place = in a systemic assessment approach a diversity of assessment tools are used, not only end-of-semester test or final exams. And in this particular aspect online systems and software can assume a relevant role. As more wide and full of different assessment tools is the assessment toolbox of a teacher/instructor the bigger will be his probability of being able to access to learners different knowledge, competences and abilities;
Diversity in assessment tools, can also be complemented with diversity in assessment methods (self-assessment, peer-to-peer assessment, team assessment, …) and in assessment scheduled-moments (summative evaluation, formative evaluation, diagnostic evolution, …);
. and for what purpose does assessment takes place = in a systemic assessment approach, evaluation doesn’t only happen for grading, serialization, selection or accountability. It also intends to contribute for growing, development, individual and collective progress and to accomplishment certification. Assessment in itself is seen as part of the learning process and therefore it contribute positively to the learning experience as a all.

Concept maps: lesson-learned

Most valuable information learned about Concept maps:
They are not only relevant to young children; there are very relevant examples of how it can be useful for higher education students. Mostly for activities related to planning and organizing complex information or tasks. The graphical representation is one of the most powerful features of concept maps; it is very enlightful.

How to use the leasson-learned:
For my online teaching classes I pretend to use it in the beginning of the semester to make my students organize their work in the courses, considering the courses objectives but most specially their personal objectives for the course (what they aim to develop and accomplish, how they intent to do that, what tools will they use, how will they see if they are getting there, how will they get the notion that they have got there).

Reflecting about concept maps

Concept maps appear as personal tools for organizing information in a meaningful, valid and useful way for its author.
The information is organized in concepts, some more central and other more peripheral. These concepts are put in a hierarchical relation with each other through expressions or ideas (connecters).
Concept maps are graphical diagrams that can be used to organize knowledge in meaningful ways (Novak & Gowin, 1984) and are generally attributed to Ausubel work whit children in the process of understanding scientific knowledge.
For him human brain organizes information based in the pre-existing mental structures. Every information was organized in concept and these new concepts was connected to previously existing concepts (by comparation).
The primary process of learning is referred as subsumption (of the newest to the oldest information in the cognitive structure).
Therefore, learning is seen as being based on representational, superordinative and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception of information
(Ausubel, 1960, cit. by Lawton, 1977).
Concept mapping was originally developed to facilitate student learning and in Ausubels’ theoretical approach they function as advance organizers of information, by organizing key-concepts into a structural and complex cognitive framework that assumed a graphical representation.

Using Cmaps to define learning objectives

This concept maps represents the main purpose and the 3 learning objectives defined for an online course related to "E-learning principles and methods".


For each learning objectives a free web tools in pointed out to be used by online students to explore and to develop a learning outcome with it.