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Developing a New Rubric for Student/Instructor Collaboration In any instructional mode, what we as educators value should directly influence what we choose to assess. That value, that which is measured, evaluated and assessed, becomes the focus of student activity. Many theoretical and empirical analyses emphasize the importance of collaboration among students in promoting the effectiveness of online learning. However, in most online courses, traditional instructor-centered examinations remain the primary means for assessing student performance . Accordingly, collaboration is marginalized. To move the continuously emerging phenomenon of online learning forward, modern practitioners must abandoning old methodologies, adopt a new paradigm, and develop and provide strategies for assessment that encourage collaboration - in online discussion, small group collaboration and collaborative examinations (including examples of specific methodologies and rubrics for assessing online collaboration.) To move the discussion forward, Karen Swan (Kent State) will lead off with a discussion of why collaboration is important in online courses, and how assessment can encourage and shape it to focus on assessment techniques that can be used to encourage and assess collaborative discussion (that most basic of online collaborative activities.) In particular, the discussion will evaluate how to build rubrics for assessing discussion from a serious consideration of specific discussion goals as well as giving examples of rubrics that have been successfully used in online courses, and addressing the assessment of both individual and collaborative work. Linda Harasim (Simon Fraser University) will lead a seminar segment providing a theoretical framework, a methodology and a set of tools for understanding and assessing online collaborative learning and conceptual change. Online Collaborative Learning (OCL), it is argued, provides hitherto unprecedented qualities for implementing, supporting and assessing individual and group intellectual progress. She will focus especially on the unique opportunities whereby instructors, educators, researchers and students can analyze and assess learning (conceptual change) in OCL environments and applications: that is, online discussion that progresses from divergent (brainstorming) to convergent (conclusive statements) in such educational activities as group seminars, discussions, debates, case analyses, and/or team projects. Included are examples of OCL applications such as the design of online student-led seminars and ways to assess student moderators and student discussants. Rather than replacing exams with other forms of assessment in online courses, the examination process itself can be made collaborative. Roxanne Hiltz (New Jersey Institute of Technology) will describe a series of field studies at NJIT that have explored the participation of students in all phases of online exam processes. This includes an assessment procedure termed the "participatory" exam process, in which individual students participate in creating essay questions, answering questions in a public online discussion space, and suggesting grading for the answers of other students to the questions they've created. Furthering the collaborative examination process, small groups of students create and grade questions. Confirming the success of this process, the majority of students reported not only learning from creating questions, but by grading answers, studying for, and answering questions.
Just Out: The Eleventh Sloan-C International Conference Proceedings The 2005 conference proceedings are now available, including a listing of each presentation and links to all proceedings provided by the authors. The conference, held last November, provided the latest information on asynchronous learning programs, processes, packages and protocols. It was geared for both experienced professionals and interested newcomers to online learning who hail from a variety of work sectors, including higher education, continuing education, business, government, health care, professional associations and nonprofit organizations. Those who attended were college-level faculty and administrators, instructional technology and media professionals and instructional designers and trainers in public and private-sector organizations.
Work with experts in the field of online collaboration by participating in these two upcoming workshops. Assessing (& Encouraging) Collaboration - March 22-32 Recognized as experts in the field of assessing collaboration in online discussion, collaboration in small groups, and collaborative examinations, Professors Hiltz (New Jersey Institute of Technology), Karen Swan (Kent State), and Linda Harasim (Simon Fraser University) bring their twenty-plus years of collective knowledge to this workshop. Professor Starr Roxanne Hiltz has been widely published in journals including JALN, JMIS, MISQ, and Communications of the ACM and is the co-editor of the book Learning Together Online: Research on Asynchronous Learning Networks (2005). Dr. Karen Swan serves on program committees and/or is a reviewer for several international education and educational technology and educational psychology journals and currently serves as an Effective Practices Editor for the Sloan Consortium. Dr. Linda Harasim leads the Virtual-U research projects, involving the largest field trials of post-secondary education in the world. Interinstitutional Collaboration - April 5-14 Professors Schroeder and McCurdy (University of Illinois) serve as pioneers in the development of models for merging classes online across institutional boundaries to provide greater diversity, perspectives, economies, and opportunities to the participating institutions. As Director of the Office of Technology-Enhanced Learning, Professor Ray Schroeder is engaged in the formation of online learning policy for the University of Illinois. Professor Shari McCurdy directs grant projects that examine the assessment of learning outcomes and the use of synchronous technologies in online learning. |
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