Saturday, July 14, 2012

Module 3: Assessing Collaboration Efforts


According to George Siemens (2008) collaboration should be assessed based on student feedback from online communities, peer evaluation, student contribution, and learning management metrics. I agree with Siemens that students should be assessed based on these four things however the data that can be pulled from a learning management system can be misleading. A query can be conducted to see how often a student has accessed a course or a particular area within that course, but this information is not detailed enough. This information will only tell you how many times this person clicked on an area, but it will not determine what the student did in this area. Depending on the course setup and the tools that are available to students, the best way to assess a student would be from the discussion board. In this area, you are able to see how many times a student participated and how they contributed.

Also when assessing students an educator should also take into account a students growth. This could be a students first experience with online collaboration and therefore may need time to adjust to this type of environment. Siemens (2008) pointed out that learning used to be an individual activity. Meaning assignments were completed individually and assessments were based on what an individual knew. Now learning happens collaboratively.

In a collaborative environment it is important for the educator to be involved. I think to a certain degree it is the educators job to ensure collaboration is occurring by encouraging students to participate and setting expectations. If an individual is not participating in the group then the rest of the group should inform the instructor and let the instructor decide what to do. In the meanwhile, I believe the group should continue completing the task at hand.

Reference:
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Assessment of collaborative learning.
Principles of Distance Education. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Learning communities. Principles of
Distance Education. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Palloff, R.M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in
community. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

3 comments:

  1. Hi LaKeisha,

    The involvement of the educator is critical to the collaboration process. I agree with you that encouraging students and setting expectations should be considered a critical part of the job.

    Evaluating performance based on minutes of use is not such a great idea. You are so right that a student could access the website a dozen times and only sit there an stare into space. Another student could log in once and focus intensely on the material presented. It would appear that the first student was more engaged in the class. In reality, the opposite is true. Other than the discussion board, do you have any other suggestions on evaluating engagement? I think this is a difficult, but important area to consider. What do you think of surveys after the course asking about engagement levels? Are they worth the time and trouble?

    Jeri

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  2. I think surveys are always a good tool for student reflection and evaluation. It would be important to include specific questions dealing with engagement, interactivity, and collaboration with a space provided for explanations. In my experience these types of questions are always missing from surveys.

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  3. Peer surveys are an excellent end-of-course evaluation tool; however, as LaKeisha stated in her original post for this module, the instructor should be informed along the way if someone isn't participating in the collaborative efforts of the group. If the group waits until the course ends to report this inactivity, the non-participating individual has no opportunity to improve upon their level of collaboration. This could be akin to formative assessment used by teachers: assessing along the way to make sure students are learning is more productive than waiting until the final(summative) course assessment is due.

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