Assessing Collaborative Efforts
In this module, you watched two video programs in which George Siemens discussed strategies for assessing collaborative learning communities in the online environment, and for creating and maintaining successful online learning communities. Both instructors and learners must take responsibility for achieving this goal. Occasionally, you may run across a student who does not like to work in groups or collaborate with peers. He or she may even request to work on a project alone rather than in a cooperative group.
As an instructor, there are several issues to consider:
- 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?
- 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?
Reflect on these questions in your blog. Reference your readings and video programs from this module, along with another blog post dealing with the topic of assessing collaborative learning. Be sure to link to all of the resources you cite in your blog.
Siemens discusses the challenges that educators face in the fact that there is a struggles with how to assess students because there is a shift in the way that educators teach. We are going from individual learning experiences to collaboration between colleagues. How do we assess a group assignment? There are four ways that Siemens introduced for assessment in a collaborative environment. Peers can assess one another in a collaborative group by using a rating scale. Another way to assess is that students can receive feedback from the online community on their assignment that they have worked on. After obtaining the feedback, they can make corrections to the project. Not all assessments have to have a mark. Another assessment is that educators assess based on contributions such as using a wiki. Lastly, educators assess based on metrics from learning management systems.
What happens when there is someone that will not participate in the online community? Siemens discusses that there are some students that struggle with working in a collaborative environment. The best way to get these students to participate is to change the assessment. The instructor should play a big role by showing students how to effectively participate and be successful. Have a practical experience.
References:
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008).Learning communities. Baltimore: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Assessment of collaboration. Baltimore: Author.
