How should
participation in a collaborative learning community be assessed? How do the
varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course affect the
instructor's "fair and equitable assessment" of learning?
Professional
development webcast are available within the university resources could help
form a collaborative learning community. Making sure that the course design is well
organized and group expectations are balanced as well as clear. Creating a
schedule to pace the deliverables helps the students stay on track and encourages
organization. Differentiated
instruction: this can be a class or workshop for teachers to be flexible
teaching style and adjusting the curriculum to learners and not expect the students
to adjust to the curriculum. “Learning objects are operationally defined in
this study as interactive web-based tools that support the learning of specific
concepts by enhancing, amplifying, and/or guiding the cognitive processes of
learners.” (Kay & Knaack, 2009).
Differentiated
Instruction is a teaching theory where instructional approaches should vary and
be adapted in relation to individual and diverse students in classrooms. It can be difficult in distance education to
determine an approach to meet the needs of all learners. Building group norms initially will help give
students stability. For students who
tend to work in isolation, it would be preferable provide deliverables that are
not group tasks.
If a student does not
want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course,
what should the other members of the learning community do? What role should
the instructor play? What impact would this have on his or her assessment plan?
The instructor’s role
is the facilitator and it is the responsibility of the students to hold each
other accountable. If a student is
placed in a group and expresses their unwillingness to participate, the members
should come together to discuss and establish roles. Sometimes it is the unknown that causes one
to shy away from collaborative groups. Part
of the culminating collaboration deliverable for assessment, students should complete
a peer evaluation based on the instructor’s creation.
References
Heick, T. (2012, MAY
10). How to get students to participate in online discussions… [Blog post].
Retrieved from: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/slippery-notion-assessing-understanding-terry-heick
Kay, R., & Knaack,
L. (2009). Assessing learning, quality and engagement in learning objects: the
Learning Object Evaluation Scale for Students (LOES-S). Educational Technology,
Research and Development, 57(2), 147-168.
Pamela,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! You have developed an effective method for creating a collaborative learning community. Moreover, I feel that differentiated learning is a vital component of collaborative learning as it allows for varying levels of learner proficiency.
I think that the DI strategy is important and even online the learner's needs are different. It must be interesting to design a course with this in mind.
ReplyDeletePamela,
ReplyDeleteAgain an excellent and detailed posting. I like the idea of differentiated instruction but, have never experienced it directly. Have you been on the receiving end of this type of instruction?