Assessment in E-Learning

What a journey – I have learned so much in these past 8 weeks.  I didn’t ever think I would enjoy creating a blog, but that has probably been the most rewarding part of this course for me.  It’s great to have this blog to house my accomplishments and reflections, and have a link to my classmates’ blogs to view all of their creative work!

Thanks to Datta Kaur for enlarging my assessment tool box and to Kristen for providing additional feedback and guidance.  I can’t wait to put my new knowledge to work in my hybrid and online courses.

All the best,

Margie

It’s been a busy but productive week.  It’s hard to believe that this class is nearly.  I had a great sense of accomplishment completing the final project.  I used Google sites to present my project and had only used it once before, so there was definitely some “refresher time” involved.  The older brain doesn’t think as quick as it once used to.  It took me forever to figure how to get the navigational area to appear as I wanted to (and I remember the same thing happening the first time I used it), but I figured it out – one of those “duh” moments.  I also experienced a little hiccup with cutting and pasting my information from a Word document, but I got through that as well.

Anyway, now it’s all complete.  I appreciated being able to view others’ projects and sharing comments back and forth.   From those comments, I decided to add some images to the content and may be making other final touches as well – but for the most part, it’s complete.

The most rewarding part is that I will be more ready to put this information to work as I prepare to teach the course in hybrid mode in about 3 1/2 weeks!

Thanks to everyone for sharing your thoughts, ideas, positive feedback, and suggestions along the way.  I think we’ve been a class that has really supported each other throughout the weeks.

This week’s focus was on “cybercoaching” and creating a precourse survey as a means to develop collaborative communities in online instruction and learning.  We were able to compare assessment and cybercoaching techniques from two courses and discuss our own intents.  These two aspects (assessment techniques and cybercoaching) are important considerations to personalize learners’ needs in online courses. 

From there, I went into ”hunker down” mode and began to pull the pieces together to create my final project.  I started early in the week by selecting my course, course competencies, and specific learning competencies and objectives to focus on for the assessment tool choices.  There are so many choices that I had some difficulty narrowing my options.  As the saying goes, “beginning is half done” (or something to that effect).  I’ve finally pulled most of that information together now, so I am feeling much less stressed and will be better able to enjoy time these next several days visiting with family at a wedding.

At this point, I am probably going to use Google sites to create the final document for presentation.  I look foward to viewing classmates projects next week (and enjoying my long weekend with family)!

I created a precourse survey using Survey Monkey for the Healthcare Statistics and Research course that I will eventually be converting to an online format.  The 10 open-ended questions evolve around students’ goals, learning style strengths and challenges, any prior math challenges, previous experience with group projects, and previous experience with MS Excel.  I did not use any rating scales, but may decide to do this in the future based on the results and feedback the first time around.   The questions I created were designed to solicit information about my students’ needs, so that I may include specific resources that will help them be most successful in the course.  

Survey Monkey was fairly easy to use.  While I’ve never been on the creation end of a survey using this particular software, I just used some logic to figure things out rather than go through a tutorial.   I knew that the tutorial was there if I really got stumped.   Now it will be even easier the next time around!  I welcome any feedback.

I’ll have to say, it’s been a bit of an off week, and I’m not entirely sure why.  This week’s focus was taxonomy of assessment – with a reminder of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives and how this can be a useful (if not essential) planning tool in connecting outcomes to assessment activities and objectives.  I consider organization to be a strength of mine and prefer a structure such as Bloom’s or WIDS to utilize in course planning.  Maybe that’s why the case study threw me off, being a rough draft and a topic (Exploring Truth in Journalism) not in the everyday realm of my teaching topics – but what a great area for students to explore and discuss.  Yesterday’s death of Walter Cronkite took me back to the news reporting days of my childhood, and made me think more about the fact that today’s youth have never known a time when there wasn’t the myriad of news venues (Internet, social networking, cable networks, etc.) available. 

With so many resources available to learners in completing assessment activities, plagiarism needs to be addressed in all courses.    This should be done at the start of the course by providing students with plagiarism guidelines and links to information on citing resources.   Reminders should be provided throughout regarding citing of resources and/or could be added to assessment rubrics.  Another way to prevent plagiarism is to create assessments that build upon each other and assessments that are unique and personalized to the learner.

I feel like I’m skipping around and rambling, even in this posting – rather exemplifies my odd week.  I suppose I’m trying to do too many different things at once.  I completed the week five activities and have gotten a jump start on week 6 activities (in anticipation of some family time next week) and ideas for the final project.   It will all come together and I’ll get there – focus, focus, focus. 

For the final course project, I will be exploring alternative assessment tools as I consider eventual conversion of my Healthcare Statistics and Research course to total online delivery. 

The Statistics course has a basic math course as a pre-requisite.  But because many of my students often express a fear of math, I would like to create a pre-course survey where they can share their initial hesitations and concerns.  This will allow me to gain a better understanding of how much time I may need to allow in specific areas and what additional resources I may need to add to the course.

I would like to also use that information to expand on discussion board topics and forums, where students (and I) can help each other out along the way.   One way I currently use DBs in another course (Medical Terminology) is almost like a Twitter concept.  Students share their tips and tricks for remembering certain word elements.  An example – one student had trouble remembering that kyph/o (as in kyphosis) means hunchback.  In their posting they shared that they gave “Igor” the last name of Kypho to remember what it means.

I would like to further explore the idea of using a concept or mind map with one of my learning objectives in the Statistics course to assess student understanding of how one process relates to another and various formulas they are asked to calculate.  I’m hoping this will help them understand the why and how instead of just plugging what they think are the correct numbers into the formulae.

I will continue to use case studies and data sheets as assessment tools in this course, but will likely explore further options in this arena.

Finally, I will also use quizzes and exams in this course as a formative assessment tool.  I will examine and evaluate some of the Blackboard exam-builder features that I could expand upon in this area.

This week our class was presented with a case study from a high school journalism teacher.  The goals of the instructor in the journalism course were for students to explore the First Amendment and Truth in Journalism.  The instructor had laid out some preliminary plans for potential objectives and assessment activities. 

Our task was to evaluate the assessment activities in relation to the course objectives within Bloom’s Taxonomy categories.   Because this case study represented a rough draft of the instructor’s ideas (and because the topic is not my area of expertise), it was challenging for me to determine the instructor’s true intent, as the assessment activities did not seem to align with the potential course objectives. 

I believe the instructor in this case study (and any instructor) could benefit from utilizing a taxonomy table in creating a course plan.  With such a tool, learning objectives can be aligned with learning and assessment activities to capture the true intent of the course.

I’ve provided my Assessment Taxonomy Table below for the Case case study/course.  It includes some of the activities mentioned by the instructor along with my suggestions of learning objective verbs that would match up with those activities.

Assessment Taxonomy Table – Casey Case Study

This week of our course focused on the variety of assessment tools that can be utilized by instructors and trainers.  We were given the opportunity to explore several types of assessment tools through the use of the jigsaw method, where each team member examined one of four types of assessment tools:  Quiz and test builders, Reflection assessment tools (blogs), Peer-to-peer collaboration tools, and course tracking tools.  The results of our team’s efforts is posted on “An Assessment Toolbox” page in this blog.

Besides the information we learned from each team member’s research, we also gained insight into group collaboration in an online environment.  Our group worked very well together.  One member jumped in early to establish steps to be completed and suggestions for a timeline.  Then each member chimed in to state what he or she would do in the project.  We initially began our collaboration through a group discussion board forum in the course; then I suggested the use of Google Docs for the document collaboration and another team member set this up.  Google Docs then became our primary mode of putting the document together and seemed to work well for the team.

In my experience, giving group assignments to a class can be seen as a “dread” by students where “rolling of the eyes” can often occur.  Part of this reaction may be because some feel they can do it more easily on their own and/or that in a group they may end up doing a majority of the tasks.  To alleviate this situation, an instructor may consider (depending on class maturity, level of the course, background knowledge, etc.) providing more specific steps and structure to the project and suggesting specific tools to utilize to accomplish the task.   In the end, hopefully the students will realize the value and benefits to what a group can accomplish vs. an individual.  A side benefit is that they will gain more experience in team work and tools and methods used to accomplish team efforts, which is so important all employers!

It was a great week to discuss the e-storm issues (technology, online learner demand, pedagogy, and dwindling budgets) with my classmates and learn to what degree these areas are impacting each of us in our educational settings.  Please view my previous post on the E-Storm.  To that post I would just add that the technology is certainly available, learners are demanding online courses and training, many faculty are eager to be trained in the best practices of online pedagogy, but economic circumstances limit what can be done in these stormy times.  We can’t do it all, and we certainly can’t do it all at once.  Priorities aligned with the vision and values of the educational institution, coupled with budget realities need to be considered as we find our way through this storm.  Perhaps a concept map would be a useful tool to employ in this regard!

I’ve also created a separate post on my concept map experience.  I’ll have to admit, the case study we read about concept mapping and pattern matching, )“From Puzzles to Problems:  Assessing the Value of Education in a Business Context With Concept Mapping and Pattern Matching,” Andersen Consulting, Daniel J. McLinden and William M.K. Trochim) was a bit of a dense read.   Using the Inspiration® software and tutorials helped me to realize the usefulness of this type of tool in an everyday educational situation.  Faculty can use a concept map tool to assist them in designing a full course or unit of instruction, mapping the course or unit objectives to an appropriate assessment tool.  I performed this task for a unit of instruction in a Healthcare Statistics course that I teach.  I can also see the value of having students utilize concept maps to assist their understanding of more difficult course material.   It can help them sort ideas and link them together to gain a better understanding specific subject matter, rather than just memorize facts without looking for a connection (truly, short-term learning).  The mere act of completing a concept map, I believe, will improve learners’ critical thinking and problem solving skills.  So it’s not so much about the tool itself as the process of finding another way to learn material, especially for long-term, retained learning.

“The Perfect E-Storm – emerging technology, enormous learner demand, enhanced pedagogy, and erased budgets – Part I:  Storms #1 and #2″, Dr. Curtis J. Bonk, June 2004.  http://www.publicationshare.com/part1.pdf

“Each day institutions of higher education are bombarded with news about unique electronic technologies that can be incorporated in teaching and learning.” (p. 3).  “…it can be overwhelming for a professor to hear about a new technology that should be incorporated when she has already extensively experimented with a number of educational technologies.”  (p. 4)

Oh, how these words ring true to me.  I think this is even more true (5 years later since this article) today with all the web 2.0 technology tools available.  With the demand for online learning continuing to increase, educational institutions want to set themselves apart from the rest and may think that more bells and whistles will do this.  This is not necessarily true.  Learners may not have the individual resources (computer capacity, adequate internet connection speed) necessary to accomplish the course competencies; and/or may become frustrated with being unable to utilize the various tools within a course that they do not complete that course and are left with a sour taste in their mouths.  Conversely, not adding any relevant web 2.0 tools in a course to enhance student learning and interaction can leave the student with a “drab” learning experience.  It is up to the instructor to design a course that utilizes the appropriate kinds of tools that will support learner success.

Educational institutions need to realize that having quality courses and providing learner and faculty support tools are key factors to success of their continued growth in the online learning world.  If students aren’t happy with an experience in an online course, they will shop around for something better.   Instructors need adequate support and training into designing and sustaining a quality learning experience.  Students may need support in the areas of technology assistance and help with the tools (Help Desk, training sessions, tutorials, etc.).  Online learners may also need assistance with time management skills and the commitment necessary for successful completion of online courses.

I have also found the following statement from the article to be true regarding online instruction over the last few years:  “As learners are exposed to different online techniques and activities, they will demand more of their online instructors as well as the online systems they are forced to use.” (p. 20).   When a student experiences a useful tool (e.g., podcasts) in an online course from one instructor, they will ask for the same from an instructor in another course.  Faculty need to be willing to consider how these tools can improve the learning experience in the courses they teach.

So what have I learned?  We can’t do it all, and we can’t do it all at once, but we can listen to our customers’ needs and suggestions to move forward in the continuous improvement of our online courses.  Faculty need to support each other with “best practices” resources in this endeavor.  The side benefit I have found is that this in turn will improve our own satisfaction with teaching online.