Reporting back from afternoon small group discussions

Group 1: Design

- do reflect on what web2 means to you.

- do triangulate: objective/task/application

- make assessment task pertinent to students

- from feedback to 'feed'...

- More discussion: critical part of design is to explore what other people are doing as part of reflecting on what Web 2 means to you.

- All this applies to all assessment practices; what positives are added and what negatives are taken away by using technology affordance; get creative with assignment design.

- part of reflection process is looking at personal education philosophy - if you believe students should be assessed at end of course, web2 not for you.

- formulation of concept of principles; do's and don'ts - do the guidelines need to be formulated as questions? Do's and don'ts can be too prescriptive.

- sustainability - there can be good design, but is it sustainable?

- do consider copyright and intellectual property issues - who owns the stuff? in UTas anything on the university wikis and blogs belongs to the university; implications for moderation, defamation, those kinds of things...

Group 2: Conduct

- 'ing' statements:

- ensuring students know how to use the tool

- providing feedback during the task; in the web2 environment, that is something that teachers have to think about in the design phase.

- providing exemplars - good and not so good output in these activities, especially if it's something that students haven't used; if they're not familiar with doing activities in these formats

- explaining the purpose of the task (also applies to non web2 tasks): explain why you're using the web2 environment ... e.g., why you're setting the task in Second Life

- explaining how much flexibility there is - non-traditional environment for many students - what's negotiable, what's non-negotiable.

- need to make sure students understand why you're doing it

- modelling - as a teacher you can model doing activities in this sort of environment

- are you actually setting tasks that can only be done in the web2 environment or are you setting tasks that could be done perfectly well in non-web 2 environment, adding layer of complexity for students unnecessarily?

- weighting ...

- make use of tools in 'program' - overall course, degree, etc.

- don't not do any of those things

- don't use the web 2 environment just to do something that can be done easily outside the web 2 environment - if students can see that they could have done something better outside the web 2 environment they will not be happy about it.

- don't confuse the task with the environment.

- don't assume all students will like working with the environment

further discussion

- don't stick with it if it's not working

- flexibility for students

- persevering - if you're introducing a new thing; if you have a very strong philosophical view and pedagogical design, it takes time for students to get used to a new thing - persevering might be important.

Group 3: Marking

- do consider the tool when you're marking and setting criteria (e.g., twitter limitation of 140 characters)

- consider audience when you're marking... you need to make sure that whatever the students are doing is audience-appropriate. If it's a public forum, the public audience is going to be crucial in the way students write...

- for large cohorts of students where there are a number of staff teaching, you need to have agreement about what the standards of marking are

- do prepare yourself, tutors, etc about what you need to pay attention to when marking - so everyone is on the same "website".

- communities of practice - within course and outside course

- exemplars of good work should be provided both for students and teachers - exemplars for marking

- sometimes using web 2 in assessment can be useful in terms of detecting plagiarism; while there are some issues of plagiarism that might arise in these environments, easy to scan and detect.

- moderating can be easier in this environment; lecturers/tutors can provide useful feedback to students as they go.

- different peer review systems are possible; students able to improve their own learning experience by responding to peer feedback.

- the world is marking - publicly available student work means you can invite members of the public / experts in the field to respond to students' work; should members of the public be able to mark students' work? Drawbacks re privacy and future professional practice.

- PS: think about how you might establish external reference points for marking...

Group 4: Reporting

- feeding back results to students, staff and other stakeholders

- interpreted reporting as the final summative assessment and reporting results back to students. 

- the sort of activities that web 2 lends itself to - collaborative, group-based work: you may be feeding back to the group; you may be feeding back to individuals. You may need two kinds of feedback.

- may be semi-automated system that can be used.

- do be aware that you currently need to manually connect informal web 2 feedback with university processes.

- emergent need for educational developers to address this problem.

- google wave may be part of this solution... potential solution for collating diversity of media responses in one place

- do be aware that the contextualised and distributed nature of web 2 may conflict with the hierarchical structure of university processes.

- do recognise the potential of web 2 for providing results quickly and feedback quickly. This is a positive thing but it also has an element of risk.

- nature of ethical practice online is an extension of ethical practice; hard to assess; hard to prescribe in a way that is not limited and caters for the creative aspects of web 2. Important that ethical standards are maintained.

- don't report a final grade to students and the rest of the world.

Further discussion:

- what is meant by maintaining ethical standards?

- e.g., mentioning other students; huge list of unethical things you could do when posting a comment on a blog

- you see feedback comments as qualitative in nature as opposed to a grade which is quantitative; but feedback comments can be interpreted in many ways... needs to be a match between the comments and the mark provided.

Group 5: Quality Assurance

- challenge to separate from other stages in the cycle; difficult also to separate from other forms of assessment.

- DO archive; web 2 makes it easier to store digital records; can store students' assignments 

- DO set up task as best as possible to avoid vexatious activity (e.g., setting it up so only lecturers can delete students' work)

- example of using calibrated peer review system.

- opportunities for peer-led regulatory behaviour

- in terms of longitudinal evaluation; use similar assessment criteria over time so that it is possible to evaluate over time; can judge how things went from semester to semester, not just student feedback on the unit.

- do be mindful of the professional development of the tutors teaching on the unit - make sure they are familiar and don't mind using it..

- do take advantage of being able to track students' contributions; electronic audit trail... number of contributions students have made, adjust assessment accordingly

- auditing - do be mindful of professional standards; not all professional standards include reference to IT...

further discussion:

- do people really believe in following university policy?

- e.g., assessment policy at university has moved to satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading

- need to alter the policy where necessary

- dynamic relationship between policy and shifts and changes in way teaching and learning is practiced...

- policy guides and systems are implemented re IT systems don't match web 2 IT systems.