EDUC-8842-2: Assessing Collaborative Efforts

Beall-Davis_S
EDUC-8842-2: Assessing Collaborative Efforts

As I reflect on George Siemens presentation in terms of assessments within distance education and collaborative environments, my mind wonders to earlier days when as an instructor, I simply gave test or quizzes to evaluate my students. Observations additionally played a significant part, but none the less not as complex as now!
According to Siemens (2010), assessments are teacher based activities and must be orchestrated within a distance learning environment much differently from traditional brick and mortar environments. Assessments must be fair and equitable! Although most of the assessment responsibilities can be offloaded into peer environments, there are still many other areas to be dealt with. Peer reviews which are a major resource in collaborative environments, prompt the usage of questionnaires or other rating schemes which assist in balancing the assessment matrix for faculty. Other opportunities to provide fair and equitable feedback include direct comments from peers or natural feedback from subject matter experts (e.g., peripheral participation). Whatever the measuring system is, the results should be beyond the “mark grade system”, based on outcomes and the degree of the student’s growth. I tend to agree with the methods provided by Siemens (2010) in term of assessments not simply being a grade or mark, but other activities within the distance learning environment must translate into a fair grading system. Examples include:

•Contribution logs (e.g., Wikis, blogging or LMS tracking systems).
•Student’s time spent in the distance learning environment (e.g., Start and stop times of students login).
•Hours of time spent performing task online – Time on task!
•Feedback from online communities.

As stated by Siemen, the view of education has been broadening! No longer do we have classroom confinements. Educators now recognize corporate and personal distance learning environments demand and expect everyone in the distant learning community to contribute through consistent collaborative efforts. No longer can we as educators depend on tests that are uni-dimensional. Siemens also pointed out that one of the biggest challenges of getting students to participate in distance learning environments revolved around the older mindsets of always being an individual contributor – the expert or genius. The transition from being rewarded on an individual level is now challenged by the collaborative efforts of others. I tend to agree with Siemens’ (2010) when he prescribes bringing in a subject matter experts (SME) and making the student comfortable with new technologies. He additionally recommends blogging where the students make contributions to the public, yet maintains his or her individualism. I think the bigger message from Siemens was to minimize the feelings of student’s loss of self and trust supported by a well connected high functioning learning community.


References

Anderson, T. (2008). The Theory and Practice of Online Learning. AU Press, Athabasca University.

Siemens, G. (2010). Assessments of Collaborative Learning. Retrieved on July 14th, 2010 from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4199700&Survey=1&47=379734&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Siemens, G. (2010). Learning Communities. Retrieved on July 14th, 2010 from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4199700&Survey=1&47=379734&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1