Month: June 2011

Categories
assessment tools reflections

Opportunities and challenges of assessments

Some of the opportunities and challenges in using technology to support student assessment in my context with healthcare workers include:

Opportunities
– Using peer assessments to create student engagement with the learning tasks without generating a lot of grading.
– Immediate formative assessments will help encourage active learning strategies and give students the opportunities to practice their skills.
– Guiding the choice of further instructional or learning activities to help increase mastery.
– Using assessments to help reactivate students’ knowledge and skills prior to learning new material.
– Using online media to engage students in their learning through the completion of online quizzes, and electronic submission of informal assignments.
– Technology can help develop customizable instruction for students (rather than going through each module sequentially, learners can decide which aspects to focus on).
– Providing corrective feedback to help students monitor their own progress and develop self-evaluation skills.
– As Kulik et al. (1980) found, a teaching method which places greater emphasis on immediate feedback at each stage of a student’s progress through course units has been demonstrated in many studies to help improve their performance (as cited in Gibbs and Simpson, 2005). Thus, generating specific and immediate feedback throughout a students’ online learning experience will be another important consideration.

Challenges
– Finding the appropriate amount of balance in offering formative assessments online without overwhelming healthcare practitioners.
– Ensuring there are no glitches using the online quizzes.
– Designing useful online assessments that aim to support student learning and are reliable. Gibbs and Simpson (2005) emphasize its importance since researchers found that students were more influenced by assessment than teaching.
– Adequate time to develop formative assessments and help support student learning.
– Limitations of making a one-sized fits all assessment approach. Thus, it will be critical to create relevant assessments that measure a range of abilities from the learning modules.
– Using assessments to motivate students to improve their learning and help them assess their own strengths and weaknesses.
– In the absence of marks/formal grading, Black & Wiliam (1998) found that students read their feedback more carefully (as cited in Gibbs & Simpson, 2005). Thus, developing relevant student feedback will also be a consideration.

References
Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39(7), 3-7. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm

Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved from
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

Jenkins, M. (2004). Unfulfilled promise: Formative assessment using computer-aided assessment. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education , 1, 67-80. Retrieved from http://www.glos.ac.uk/shareddata/dms/2B72C8E5BCD42A03907A9E170D68CE25.pdf

The TLT Group. (n.d.).Seven principles: Collection of ideas for teaching and learning with technology. Retrieved from http://www.tltgroup.org/Seven/Library_TOC.htm

Categories
assessment tools

Case study: Boris and the Periodic Table dilemma

Given the nature of Boris’ situation, I think that he could try to consult his fellow colleagues and do some research online (or ask a librarian to help) to find self-directed review tools for his students learning the periodic table. Conducting a quick, preliminary internet search yielded some relevant results that Boris could use and/or adapt in his lessons. Boris could also create or use online webquests designed to test students’ abilities to review material on their own, and they can test their knowledge of what they’ve learned about the periodic table of elements. Additionally, Boris will need to determine whether this kind of informal formative assessment is sufficient or if he wants to grade his students’ work. Here are some links below that I’d recommend that Boris examine:

Nova’s “It’s Elemental” Interactive Periodic Table + Quiz
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/periodic-table.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/chemistry-elements.html

Testing students’ memorization of the elements of the Periodic Table (timed 15-minute assessment)
http://www.sporcle.com/games/elements.php

Periodic Table and the Elements
http://www.chem4kids.com/files/elem_intro.html

Elements Matching Quiz
http://education.jlab.org/elementmatching/matchingpage.html?hard

Periodic Table of Elements
A Resource for Elementary, Middle School, and High School Students
http://periodic.lanl.gov/index.shtml

Categories
Moodle reflections webct vista

Exploring WebCT Vista- Part II (from Module 3: Interaction and Assessment Tools)

Taking a break from working on my Moodle quiz, I tried out the WebCT Vista instructions in Module 3. I successfully set up my WebCT Vista sandbox folder by accessing the ETEC 565A workshop and using the build tab. Next, I created a folder, entering my last name as the folder title. This will be a repository of all my explorations in WebCT Vista (when I get a chance from Moodling).

Next, I also set up my WebCT Vista discussion area by first creating my own discussion folder (again using my last name as recommended in the instructions). I developed a test discussion topic within my folder naming it “Assessment methods in Moodle.” In the description field I entered the following: “What are the different types of assessments you can use in Moodle? Explore both formative and summative options.” Next, I’m onto working on more of the e-learning toolkit as well as this week’s new discussion posting on “Assessment challenges and opportunities.” Additionally, I’ll have to go back and continue working on my very own assessment methods in Moodle.

Categories
Moodle

An exploration of web design principles and storyboarding

Write an entry for your course weblog about your experience here (on your “Home” page and posting a new entry). How labour intensive was the process? What worked well? What was challenging? What surprised you?

I found the e-learning toolkit particularly useful and inspired me to pick up some books on web design and accessibility. For the web design software, I downloaded a 30-day trial version of Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, and open source WYSIWYG editors Amaya and Kompozer (from NVU). Sketching out the basic website layout was the premise of the storyboarding exercise which definitely helps organize and plan the website structure prior to its implementation. I drew a storyboard that was similar to my WordPress blog and used the web design principles I learned from the “web pages that suck” checklist (of what not to do in web design).

Next, I created an account on Bravenet to upload my webpage creation and found the process fairly simple and straightforward. After the initial registration, I chose a template design and then edited the content of my webpages. For now, it’s a pretty basic site which I’m using as my storyboarding practice at: http://etec565storyboarddiana.bravesites.com. I checked the appearance of the site using two different web browsers, IE9 and Opera. Both appeared to be similar and so I moved onto testing my website’s accessibility using the Web Accessibility Evaluation (WAVE) tool at: http://wave.webaim.org/report?url=http%3A%2F%2Fetec565storyboarddiana.bravesites.com&js=2. I “WAVED” my page by entering the url, and got a surprising error message: “Uh oh! WAVE has detected 1 accessibility error. The following are present in the head section or apply to this page in general.” I located where this error was in heading 1- where the WAVE tool outlined with a red icon that there was an empty heading without any content. It was sort of confusing since I did have a heading in there as “Navigating the tumultuous terrain of storyboarding.” Also, in a yellow icon it stated that there was one or more javascript elements present. In any case, this just means that I’ll have to go back to my storyboarding site and try to fix the error(s) that the WAVE tool found. Overall, I found this was a great exercise to practice storyboarding, learn about web design principles, web design software, website accessibility, and HTML authoring. My next step is to try out the web design software I’ve downloaded to determine which one to use for my Moodle site and start developing the content for my e-learning modules.

Categories
reflections

Communication and collaboration tools

I developed an e-learning portal for healthcare practitioners with the intention that it would complement the existing f2f training sessions that I currently offer without the constraints of time and location. My goal is that it will help them become more familiarized with the available resources and learn how to use them effectively in order to improve their research skills. One of the first communication tools I created was a course announcements section to relay information to healthcare practitioners asynchronously. Additionally, there is a technical support discussion forum developed for students to troubleshoot and help each other with minor technical issues. However, for more urgent matters, there is a contact email provided for additional technical assistance.

Also, an asynchronous icebreaker activity was created as a discussion forum to help develop a sense of community as clinicians get to know each other. This will also help me gauge what I can do to support them to achieve their learning goals. Here are my icebreaker questions below:

– Introduce: yourself to your fellow colleagues.

– Share: your online research experiences and techniques.

– Reflect: What are the key skills and approaches that you feel you need to develop in order to meet your e-learning goals?

Another learning space I created was a synchronous chat room where practitioners can go to discuss aspects of their self-study modules as a virtual meeting space. Since this e-learning portal is meant to supplement the f2f training sessions that I’ll continue to offer, I’ve also included a calendar widget to alert students to any upcoming learning events. As well, I added a new events section, a who’s online section and a messages box so students would have the option of sending instant messages to each other. There’s also a newsfeed of upcoming events to supplement the calendar view and a recent activity section to help me keep track of online student activities.

All of the modules will be available for students since they can decide to learn at their own pace/time. At the end of each module I’m thinking of using quizzes to assess their understanding of the material. I’m considering embedding some recorded video tutorials and perhaps even schedule a synchronous, live web-conferencing session similar to our Wimba Moodle sessions. Another communication tool I’m thinking of implementing is the use of student webblogs or reflective journals based on an article I recently read about the merits of reflective practice for healthcare professionals at: http://meds.queensu.ca/ohse/assets/reflective_practice__a_systematic_review.pdf. I’ll have to figure out where I want to include the journal activity (if it’s within each module or one at the beginning that they would use throughout their learning activities).

In any case, here’s the link to my Moodle site that I’ve worked on so far: http://moodle.met.ubc.ca/course/view.php?id=243. Any useful suggestions and/or feedback is welcomed.

Categories
communication tools YouTube

Trinh’s available options for managing communication in an online course

Were this a F2F course, she would set up office hours – but that’s not an option in an online course, is it? Post your ideas in the what could Trinh do discussion forum.

After much consideration, I think some of the options available for Trinh includes the following:

– Make the case for getting a teaching assistant (or more for each course section) to help her out with managing 150+ students (addressing their course inquiries, providing formative and summative assessments, etc).
– Distinguish what questions can be addressed to the TA and/or instructor to students enrolled in her course.
– Use one designated email for all course communications and let students know to send course-related messages just to this email address (rather than multiple email addresses).
– Clearly let students know when you’re available/not available (for example let students know when she’ll be away for a period of time via announcements, emails, and/or discussion postings so they understand why you may not be able to reply back to them right away).
– Create different types of help sections in the discussion forums so that students can obtain assistance and support from their peers to address their inquiries.
– Use filter/labelling email management strategies to help organize the content of her emails (i.e. if she’s using Gmail’s mail forwarding service then she can also filter out the messages being sent to her designated course email address and put it into a labelled folder to address all course-related inquiries).
– Offer scheduled online chats and/or videoconferencing sessions essentially setting up “virtual” office hours to address students’ questions.
– Build presence by offering YouTube video presentations (that may also address students’ questions and clearly communicate your expectations of them).
– As Anderson (2008) suggests on p.356, the virtual teacher has to set and adhere to appropriate timelines to help student have realistic expectations and relieves the teachers of the unrealistic expectation of providing instantaneous 24/7 feedback.
– Time management is key for Trinh- rather than checking online activities or email constantly.
– Develop and implement an explicit assessment framework for students so they understand what is expected of them throughout the course (i.e. assignments, participation, etc).
– Make assessments a reflective exercise by assigning students the task of using their discussion postings in their blogs to show evidence of their understanding. As Anderson (2008) states, this moves the responsibility from the teacher to the student and can save the teacher time.
– Use student moderators to help lead class discussions and act as peer support (leading to less emails from students for Trinh to manage).
– Provide an archive of the live streaming presentations so students in different time zones that may have missed these sessions can catch up.
– Clearly communicate course expectations, assignment deadlines, weekly readings, etc. from the onset via the course syllabus. Perhaps this information is not clear for students or it’s located in several different sections so she may want to consider amalgamating into one area and letting students know that it’s their responsibility to diarize this information (i.e. assignment deadlines, live presentations, etc).

Reference
Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an online learning context. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning, (pp. 343-365). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008_Anderson-DeliveryQualitySupport.pdf

Categories
reflections

Entering the nebulus of word clouds

Something that I’m planning to use in the development of my Moodle splash page is Wordle in order to create some nifty images of word clouds. I’ve played around with it before but never really used it for anything (not yet) so I’m excited to try it out for my course site. Anyways while I was writing this, I got started on creating one (just for this post) so if you look above you’ll see my first “official” creation. 🙂

Also, I found a useful blog post which offers other options for creating word clouds (not limited to Wordle): http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/waiting-for-wordle-free-word-cloud-options-to-use-now/

Categories
reflections

Trying out WebCT/Vista for a spin

Although, I haven’t yet followed the e-learning toolkit instructions for WebCT/Vista I thought I’d try out its features since we recently got access to it as a ETEC workshop. First, I watched the embedded YouTube clip that John created which offered a good preliminary overview. Next, I noted that there were 3 different tabs: build, teach and student views which I clicked through. I then tried creating a chatroom calling it “Moodle vs. Blackboard- that is the question.” In the description field I typed in “Chat forum to discuss the affordances of these two LMSs” and limited it to 25 participants. I did notice that some students chose to max it out to 1000- I wonder though will there ever be that many students in one course? Anyways, I digress. The other nifty thing I tried out was adding a calendar entry for today (June 17) writing that reflections were due today. In the instructions I wrote “write a blog reflection about your experience testing WebCT/Vista and funny enough here I am attempting my own assignment. 🙂 Overall, thus far I think that WebCT/Vista is more intuitive to use and user-friendly than Moodle (but it’s not a fair comparison just yet since I need to dabble in Moodle more to get used to it). Also, I liked using the tabs in WebCT/Vista to navigate back and forth from the build, teach, and student views which was akin to Moodle’s “Turn on/off editing feature” links to toggle back and forth from the instructor to student views. As John’s suggested, priority #1 is Moodle so I’ll be focusing on this LMS moreso for the rest of the course.

Categories
reflections

Fostering an Interactive Learning Experience

Keeping in mind your own experiences as a teacher and as a student, consider what Anderson means when he describes the attributes of learning in terms of being learner-, knowledge-, assessment-, and community-centred. To what extent have you experienced online or mixed-mode courses that achieved this kind of learning environment?

As a MET student, I’ve noticed that there’s a greater emphasis on community-centred learning through asynchronous and synchronous discussions/chats compared to some of the previous online courses that I’ve taken outside of this program. I find that everyone is actively trying to build their knowledge through ongoing inquiries and commentaries in their discussion posts. Also, it seems that the amount of instructor-led interaction varies from course to course. Some instructors choose to actively participate in the online community alongside students whereas others have left it mostly up to the students to lead the discussions.

I recall in ETEC 510, we had the opportunity to work on a group project and instead of using the available discussion forum space or Google Docs (both of which we were familiar with) our group decided to step outside of our comfort zone to try something new and used Teambox. It helped us to not only learn how to use a new tool, but also to collaborate on our group project using social software features and enabled us to stay connected with each other outside of our virtual classroom. Additionally, in terms of a learner-centred context, Anderson (2008) suggests offering virtual icebreakers and opportunities for student to introduce themselves. I can definitely attest to the fact that all of my MET courses so far have consistently included an opportunity for student introductions during the first week of classes to help us all get to know each other. As well, the activities have focused on the learner and I think each student realizes that he/she is ultimately responsible for their learning experience throughout the program. The learner-centred approach is about balancing the amount of assistance instructors offer their students and encouraging them to become more independent learners. Even in terms of the weekly discussion topics, I appreciate that it takes into account the diversity of learners and their previous teaching/learning experiences. It seems that the topics have been strategically selected in order to promote students’ interests and act as motivation to engage in active learning.

Also, in regards to the assessment-centred context some of my MET courses so far have used both formative and summative evaluations. However, for the most part assessments have been summative in nature. Yet, in ETEC 500 students were encouraged by the instructor to share drafts of their assignments (i.e. article critiques, etc) on the discussion forums prior to submission so that everyone had the opportunity to receive peer feedback to improve their papers (which also draws upon the community-centred approach). In terms of the knowledge-centred context, all of the MET courses have thus far grounded itself in relevant theoretical frameworks, and have offered additional online resources to help students reflect and further develop their knowledge. As Anderson (2008) states the internet has definitely expanded opportunities for learners to deepen their knowledge base however it is up to the skillful e-teacher to effectively offer the “big-picture scaffolding” so that students can discover relevant information on their own.

How might you use the learning technologies tools you have at your disposal to help you to create meaningful interactions?

I currently utilize WebEx meetings to connect with my colleagues who are located throughout the province and use Google Docs to collaboratively work on projects. However, I’m looking forward to applying the knowledge and skills that I’ll be learning from developing a functional Moodle site directly to my work as there is no e-learning library instruction in place as of yet. I’d like to incorporate some interactive features including discussion forums and live chats to help support the development of community-centred learning among healthcare practitioners.

Reference:
Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson (Ed.). The Theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed.) (pp.45-74). Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/99Z_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

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Uncategorized

LMS Proposal is complete!

The LMS Moodle Proposal is available from the “Proposal” tab of my blog. For your viewing convenience it’s been appended in Word, PDF and text formats. Enjoy and happy reading to all!~

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