Plenary discussion 1


Reporting back on morning group discussions

 

Group 1 - blogging/microblogging

- good assessment practices

- characteristics of microblogs (status updates): immediacy, ...

- blogs encourage deeper reflections, dialogue between writer of blogs, between instructors and students; sharing feedback as you go ... not just final assignment...

- have to deal with closed system vs public system 

- if it's public you have serendipity where members of the public might comment on students' blogs; authentic real-world activity; students have to come to terms with the fact that it is public, that they have to write for a public audience...

- feedback - different techniques used: printing and marking as normal assignment; with blogs and twitter you can make supportive comments as they go; assessors have to watch what they say in this public forum as well (eg., not appropriate to comment on grammar, spelling, make criticisms in public forum)

- make it very clear to students what the purpose of the tool is... comes back to why you're asking students to do this

 

Group 2 - blogging/microblogging

- could just say 'ditto' - a lot of the issues are the same

- diverse way of using wikis...

- same academic standards are still important

- process is transparent...

- authenticity/simulation of real-world activities; these are some of the things they could be doing in the real world...

- criterion-referenced assessment should be available to students prior to undertaking task

- individual or group assessment; clarify the task, objectives, attributes - have that all clearly linked; we can track that quite well.

- control issue - group work - do we want students to have that space completely for their use (e.g., lecture notes - students editing lecture notes).

- public vs private - private kept the students safe...

- like the idea of having students submit their work to wikipedia and the public judges whether it is correct...

 

Group 3 - photo/video file-sharing

- ditto again

- trust well-resourced academic to do their job - their job is to maintain academic standards...

- how we can ensure creativity

- take a well-developed task and then move to the technology to expand the task; new technology enable a range of tasks; consuming, reflecting, producing, etc.

- important to remember that students have different motivations; not all students want to engage in the transformative power of web 2 technologies.

- students should be able to fail and should be able to get a HD

- inter-disciplinarity is important... getting students to do more humanities/art-style tasks (reflecting, etc)

- integrity: quality assurance; intrinsic motivation for students.

- web 2 enables intrinsic motivation, facilitates integrity because students take ownership of the work they produce - it's public, shared with other students, not just with the assessor.

 

Group 4 - social networking

- what's this about? any environment that allows a community to share things and to flourish - e.g., listserves, email groups - open definition...

- how social should social be? link between openness and social aspect and how serious a task would be taken... how do we ensure that formality matches criticality?

- ratings systems; more formal systems - calibrated peer review - students are able to assess each other quite well and quite acurately;

- teacher needs to be well engaged; shared understanding between students and teachers about task and assessment.

- how big or small did public have to be?

- increasing lack of control; opportunities here for highly individualised assessment; if you relinquish control do you increase opportunities for plagiarism

- raised issue of bringing ideas together; user-tagging, meta-data, aggregating knowledge

- efficiencies - great opportunity to facilitate assessment, take the burden away from teachers...

- potential assessment for peer review - could be lecturer to mark students' review of another students' work; get students to engage in critically reviewing

 

Group 5 - social bookmarking

- discussed what social bookmarking was; unlike all the other technologies discussed; more of a tool than a process

- to what extent does it come under the topic...

- how much can you assess beyond tool/software

- asking a student to do a reflection on their use of the tool might be more appropriate to assess - rather than just their use of the tool.

- private/public issues: social bookmarking difficult to do in-house; inevitably in the public sphere...

- how would you assess student work on social bookmarking?

- what academic standards ... e.g., referencing

- authenticating issues; identifying contributions

- unless we're assessing the number of tools they could use... not really an assessment task

- assessing comments might be more appropriate...

 

Group 6 - podcasting

- podcasting is an activity with a larger technical overhead and particularly with vodcasting; when video editing is involved

- case of students devoting so much time and energy to learn the tool, it takes away from elements of the task you are trying to assess

- citation of sources is a challenge; alternative ways of citing sources for scholarship; how to we go about attributing different sources throughout the podcast - given the podcast is audio recording - message at the end? how do students acknowledge specific ideas throughout the podcast.

- language conventions: spoken format of the podcast; what degree of formality/informality is permissable?

- good assessment is good assessment.

- principles like critical alignment, timely feedback, transparency...

- some academics interpret web 2 as entirely open and open-ended, up to students to drive it; but there is still a need for scaffolding.

- digital and video recording aren't new; when placed on the internet there are problems and issues; how the open forum of the internet (platform of itunesU)...

- comment: alternative means of citing sources (is this needed?) We have this idea that we don't have to use referencing standards when presenting something orally; lecturers should model good practice. Principle is the same - need to acknowledge ideas - but the way you do it might be different - we should all be doing 'in-text citations' in oral presentations...

- there are integrated means of presenting other information (e.g., powerpoint file, etc)

- important issue relating to language; this is not just limited to podcasting - also important for other web 2 activities (blogging, etc)

- perhaps the style of writing/presenting that needs referencing is more appropriate for an essay rather than a podcast...

 

Group 7 - virtual worlds

- what are virtual worlds? Best known at the moment is Second Life...

- mostly good for things like simulation; can also be used as a platform for interaction for people dispersed in geographical space.

- not the case that students/young people are all going to be into virtual worlds/gaming.

- lesson design and assessment are critically important to get students engaged in the technology.

- general assessment principles still apply

- use of the technology should be driven by the learning; course design, clear objectives, being able to demonstrate deep learning.

- process that students go through; virtual worlds provide an experiential aspect, social aspect; there need to be clear objectives in terms of participation and production at the end of the process.

- reflection on what students are doing needs to be build into tasks

- tasks within the virtual world often integrate learning and assessment

- example of students interviewing people in second life - students would go to virtual space, interviewee would show them around, introduce to the space; students use this information to develop a news report; students then engage in a chat-show style interview; all interviewees were native chinese speakers or learners of chinese language. Referencing was not an issue in this example; students were gathering the information themselves. Video, audio and written outcome used for assessment.

- rubrics; very clear criteria for what students have to achieve. 

- student-teacher negotiated rubric might be the way to go in the future.

- if students are working to the rubric, you may have situation where all students have achieved high standards; how do explain that?