First published on Jan. 29th 2016 for ETEC565:

Our group was tasked with creating a rubric that would help determine the best LMS for a group of Year 3 medical students who would require video-based assessment through a distance education model.  Luckily for us, Momoe teaches within the medical field and was able to respond to questions we had regarding the nature of clinical assessment, and could lend her expertise towards the building of the rubric’s criteria.  Randy started us off in a Google document, and Nidal contributed early on with work he had done in another course, that looked into the best LMS to use based on the SECTIONS framework of Bates & Poole (2003) and Anderson (2008).  Mark also chimed in with research he conducted about popular criteria for choosing an LMS, which although it was not cited, helped us narrow in on what we all commonly agreed would be required in our rubric.

I did not contribute to this early research-gathering process, as the other members moved very quickly when gathering resources, but I contributed to early drafts of the rubric once we had decided upon criteria.  I had assumed we might find a time to live-chat, but due to the size of our group and the challenge of Nidal’s location, that never happened.  Thankfully I was placed into a group of initiative-takers, who all contributed where they saw fit and we were in constant communication over e-mail and in the Google doc itself.  Randy, Momoe and I spoke through the Google document chat and flushed out the rubric together during the week, with Nidal contributing when he was available.  Randy volunteered to take on the task of the precis and Mark the paragraph rationale.  I am usually much more involved in the creation process of group tasks, but I felt very fortunate to have this work for this particular task.  This is my last week at my current school and the days have been full of administration and goodbyes, with my evenings dedicated in part to another assignment due in another course.  I pledged to my group members that I would look for opportunities to take the lead in the future, and thankfully they are all gracious individuals.

I learned a lot from the perspectives and ideas of my group mates, and I hope I contributed in a way that was at least somewhat helpful this round.  I look forward to continuing on with them, and having a more focused personal energy to bring to the table.

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References

Anderson, T.  (2008). “Towards and Theory of Online Learning.”  In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University.

Bates and Poole. (2003) “A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology.”  In Effective Teaching with Technology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Pages 75-105.