Assessment as Key

Author Tisha Bender stresses the importance of assessment not only as a way to measure student output, (how well a student understands and applies concepts taught), but she also argues that assessment can and should drive the design of a course. As a constructivist she emphasizes that assessment needs to be in constant alignment with the course learning objectives and supported by teaching strategies that are constructivist in nature; project based learning, collaborative learning, interactive dialogue between learners and instructors and writing workshop techniques. (p. 176)

When it came to discussions this week we were given the choice of responding to prompts on either:

1. how we plan to assess learning in our own ed web projects
2. how would we measure the “impact” or real world carryover of the learning
3. “what else” (a catch all for topics mentioned by Bender but, not addressed in 1. and 2.).

I read postings in all three areas, but spent most of my time in forums 2 and 3.

I was intrigued by Bender’s thought processes in pages 174-192. What initially perked me up in these pages was her comment about using assessment in guiding course construction.(p. 175) Upon first reading her initial comments I groaned. It made me recall the many on line modules I’ve been though at work wherein a clear set of objectives was written up front and shared with learners. But, much less time was spent on developing ways to make sure learners can use the knowledge in real applicable ways (context). I posted this reaction as my first contribution to discussion.
My most valuable contribution was being able to connect what we were discussing in both forums 2 and 3. In forum 2 Phil H. originally outlined the need for assessment in his ed web and what his plan was. He has a plan to ask all learners to submit at least one demonstration of how they are using the technologies covered in his ed web in a real world application. This is a great idea for authentic assessment that demonstrates not only understanding, but ability to apply knowledge. This related to my forum 3 posting (revealed after more discussion and thought) because my original complaint was that course designers focus only on the objectives and not enough what comes after. Do designers of on line workplace trainings give enough thought to the learners? Are learners really able to apply what they learned? Is the assessment developed authentic? A course designer has to see all the parts and view their course from different perspectives to make sure that it is successful. Assessment is an important key to both course design as well as student assessment.

I also want to recognize Phil H. for his contributions related to his wife's on line teaching experiences. I never considered how a completely on-line school would accommodate kids who had special needs. What happens when the school psychologist isn't down the hall? What other resources have to be developed? Something to ponder further.

Formative Evaluations with Dr. Tessmer

A few weeks ago we were joined by Dr. Tessmer from CIIT to discuss the role of formative evaluation in instructional design. I enjoyed listening to Dave and Marty discuss the formative evaluation process. Our class conversations on the presentation were varied.

Many cohorts were interested in the pricing examples that Dr. Tessmer used. Some expressed shock at the costs of developing on- line trainings. Others wondered at how cost estimates (bids) were derived. On cost, Dr. Tessmer suggested padding 10%-20% of your worst estimate (depending on how developed the ideas are from a given client). I liked that he would “sneak in” the formative evaluations and front end analysis. Sometimes he would do this by not breaking these items out as separate line items. Other times, he would do this by marketing these items as a “new means for new technologies.” It was a guerrilla marketing strategy implemented on behalf of the formative evaluation process!

Another topic of interest was how to apply the formative evaluation process to our Ed-Web projects. A sample of the questions here; how many people to have reviewed a project, how many times to review a project, issues in paying a reviewer, how to affect a formal formative review in our own projects. I would like to acknowledge Jessica D. for her contributions to the discussion this week. She suggested setting up a peer review/formative evaluation. Jessica also noted the need to carefully word the questions asked of evaluators in the formative evaluations. It is important to word questions so that evaluators do not feel there was a deficiency in them, or their understanding. Rather, the evaluators are detecting problems in the materials. I wanted to follow up on Jenn M.’s story about being a “google” test subject. The “think aloud” strategy Jenn M. mentioned also came up in the forum discussion, which we were able to see at the end of the week. Think aloud strategies are a real help to me in learning. It was interesting to see that such strategies are used in formative evaluations.

My most valuable contribution was summarizing one of Mr. Tessemer’s strategies for getting feedback using surveys. He suggested that we use less questions and place comment boxes after each question. In the context of the conversation, this came up as an alternative way to structure surveys. One of our cohorts confessed that they tend to try to escape surveys in the quickest manner! Dr. Tessmer’s strategy was more of a “luring” approach.

There were a lot of good ideas generated by the presentation and discussion that will help us in furthering our understanding of Formative Evaluations.

The quiet and private discuss.....

After reading Bender Ch. 6 we were asked to discuss how we could use the information presented in either our Ed-Web project or in the Web Conference.

The conversation followed threads on; how to react to students who are quiet on line, the role of the instructor on line and making connections to personal experience. There was some debate about whether, or not it is a bad thing if students are quiet, not necessarily posting a lot in on line discussions. Many felt that this is okay, pointing to personal experiences with quite students who were engaged and actively learning, or with their own personal experiences of being a quiet student. I thought it was interesting that while many people agreed that it is okay to be quiet on line, only Phil H. (the original start person of the thread) specifically state that he would pursue any of Bender’s strategies to bring out quiet students. In retrospect, I should have asked others discussing if their ideas about quiet students meant that they would, or would not do anything different.

Another thread that developed was on the positive role that instructor interaction can play in encouraging students in on line environments. It was generally agreed that instructor interaction is a powerful thing. Some were cautious to make the point that active- caring instruction didn’t mean giving the answers away so that students had to think less.

I had contributed a specific idea to use in my Ed-Web in relation to Bender’s comment that "personal narrative is acceptable, as long as it is accompanied by critical thinking...."(Bender p. 63) The idea was that participant’s in my Ed-Web would reflect back on how their families had come to the US. To promote critical thinking participants would then be asked to compare and draw common themes out of their family immigrant experiences. This idea itself didn’t generate much discussion, but I think it was my best contribution as it represented a specific response to the readings. Eileen K. picked up on that section of Bender reading and noted that Bender made a rather broad generalization in that section, "Education cannot take place without some degree of self-disclosure." It was great that Eileen brought this up (I choose to recognize her as for this) as I think she was modeling good discussion starting technique…bringing up a quote that reflected an author’s bias, and asking us to debate the merits of the assumption. Her post opened up a new line of thoughts about what is personal in instruction. Overall, I’d say that for a group of largely quiet and private people discussions went pretty well!

The Color Conundrum

I’m summary blogging on this topic because I find it fascinating. I also find I’m at a loss for what to do! The discussion did help, but I think there is so much more to it than what we touched on in the discussion.

Helpful contributions to the discussion:

First, I want to acknowledge the contributions of David S. (cohort) and Dan (instructor). They helped me with RBG and CMYK. David added to my understanding of printers and how they operate. Thank goodness someone in the printing world created drivers that convert RBG to CMYK, one less detail to work out. There were lots of helpful tips for me in that thread; printing professionally -use CMYK; working in photo shop advice to save image file in CMYK, RBG is default. I don’t know if I can count David S. twice, but here I go…. I appreciated David S. question about link colors. I did not realize that web links used to be a standard blue.

For application, I would recognize contributions of Phil H.. He wrote that he had decided upon two color schemes, one for each of his two edweb audiences. This is great application of what we are learning. I also found his statement that he was struggling to justify why he chose the colors he chose outside of the fact that he liked them to be very honest. I’m not sure it is a bad thing that we are each attracted to certain colors or color palettes. But, I do recognize that we are being challenged to think about colors and their applications for an audience, and what associations are being conveyed by color.

I see the value in my contributions to this discussion being my ability to be painfully honest in acknowledging my lack of knowledge on the topic (so what are RBG and CMYK?), and in sharing this site with the group. The site is good at breaking down the RBG colors and allowing the user to experiment with each. As you select a color a scheme of other complementary colors is presented. The site provided a helpful starting point. Another source I found this week that was a blog, that had samples of web pages by color. Each web site is monochromatic but paradoxically, incredibly diverse. By the end of week two I had visited all the sites in this color series! Not that I’m any more secure in selecting a color scheme, but it was addictive, a bit like trying to pick out a yarn combination in knitting.

In the end I think I’m going to need to keep revisiting color in my edweb design, as well as navigation and I can’t imagine how unsettled I’m going to feel after we delve into fonts!

Web Conference Discussion, Wk 1 Developing eLearning Instruction

First, I to acknowledge the contributions of another person. This semester we were asked to select a minimum of two people whose contributions to discussions influenced us and to explain why or how. I’m going to select Stephenie B. for my first person to acknowledge. What I appreciated about Stephenie was not so much any one particular contribution, but rather her overall leadership of the discussion. I thought it was terrific that she listed out for the discussion group the format for discussion right off the bat. She did this by creating a separate thread for each question to be considered. She also jumped in near the end of week one with a summary that we could all respond to, and work off before submitting our group’s final questions to Dave and Dan. I admire her assured leadership style.

The discussion on what steps should be taken in response to feedback the formative run of the Web Conference was quite robust, lots of people contributed. We spent much of the discussion on the length of the conference and possibilities for combining groups in the future. There were also concerns about how to give the conference a more unified feel, by requiring all groups to list objectives, creating opening and closing for the conference, a program of events especially synchronous events. Overall, I think we were all looking to create a less overwhelming feel to the conference for ourselves, as facilitators and for future participants.

My most valuable contribution was trying to bring the group some new ideas about how the conference might be organized. Individuals were thinking of one week, two weeks or three weeks with arguments being made for each of these options. I tried to present a compromise idea between one and two weeks at nine days and gave a suggestion of what that might look like. I hope the idea will gain some traction in the final evaluation as I think we do need to edit ourselves and shorten the conference.

Finally, Linda G. provided insights that I think were helpful in having the group think about the best way to present synchronous sessions. This topic had not come up until that point and you could tell that Linda had gone over the threads of our group discussion and reviewed the feedback a second) time before noting that we had missed addressing how to make the synchronous sessions more effective