Week 3 Mind Mapping and other assessment tools

Articles
The Perfect E-Storm by Bonk (2004) was a little dated, but express 30 great tools to in online learning. The PowerPoint http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/ was extremely helpful in updating the tools and their rankings over the last three years.

I found interesting that Bonk previously was a corporate controller and CPA. What a change of careers to go into psychology. I agree with Bonk's comment about the number of tools being overwhelming and teacher and students becoming hesitant to use them.

I found the Bonk's article very interesting. The area of the article that intrigued me was the Reusable Learning Objects (RLO)- taking a small chunk of learning content from one course and reusing it or repurposing for other modules, courses, or programs. The word proprietary came to mind. Searching the Internet I found a lot of articles on proprietary application as it relates to RLO. I personally was thinking of instructors who take a proprietary stance over the curriculum they have developed.

At the institution I work at, you are sometimes paid to develop new curriculum. The college has now started an open portfolio, where instructors put curriculum to share with others. Although just this semester, I was assigning a new instructor to a course and requested another instructor to help out the new instructor with curriculum. The veteran instructor had been paid to develop the curriculum for the college but refused share it and a small battle followed.

I can see myself using RLOs by collaborating with my peers to determine what chucks of learning content should become RLO for our program and determine where and when they should be used. I can see a great learning unit or activity getting repurposed many times in the same program, and over the two years the students become bored and the learning unit or activity is no longer engaging.

Ok I found another interesting topic from the article- Etexts. My professor from last semester polled students whether they want him to use Etext, and the answer was a sound no. I personally can not read a large amount of text on the computer. I did find an article that listed a few other disadvantages of Etexts.

The article highlights Etexts typically expire after 180 days and students will no longer have the resource. Textbooks typically can be resold and Etexts can run in the $70-$120 range and can not be resold. Also instructors mentioned that individuals using Kindles did not have a page number to reference only a long location code.

The positive part of an Etext is that if you are only using a few chapters it may be a go choice, and of course Etexts are green, unless you print everything out like I do.
There are a lot of technologies that we can use, but we must understand our students an the advantages and disadvantages of using the technology.

Ah Ha moments

Using Jigsaw in the College Classroom article reminded me of how I currently use an affinity diagram. The variation of having students read the same material, but react to it from a different perspective was something new I can use. The article From Puzzles to Problems: Assessing the Value of Education in Business Context with Concept Mapping and Pattern Making also provide another approach to using Concept or Mind Mapping, which was to have each participant independently come with the category headers to gain individual perspective of what has been brainstormed. I also liked the idea of using the concept or mind mapping to do a before and after assessment.

Example of Concept Map for Project Management.

Discussion

Using Inspiration for concept mapping was pretty easy. I liked the idea of outlining using the software and then creating the map. One student mentioned a Quality Matters as curriculum design tool for online courses-Link posted in the links area. Also there is a link to a PowerPoint on the top 100 technology tools for 2009.

http://jolt.merlot.org/vol3no3/frydenberg.htm
Great article about blogging in post secondary courses. The two things about the article that surprised me was that individuals were taking more time to think about what they wrote and that women were more hesitant to blog than men. I liked the idea of posting and responding to post prior to the class discussion. What a great way to get the students actively engaged and bring the face-to-face discussion in class to a deeper level.

Week 2 Assessment Inventory

I found the assessment inventory a good way to clarify the difference between teacher-centered and learner-centered learning.

Good assessment helps us understand what the students can do well and what they need to improve on, raise questions about curriculum and teaching strategies, and better understand how to assess. The instructor needs to be a facilitator and coach, learning right along with the student.

I did find the assessment a little repetitive and was surprised that the term authentic, constructivism, or action learning was not used to describe the assessment tools of projects, papers, and portfolios.

Kim-Wisconsin

Carolyn's introduction of Kim

I am introducing Kim Hollman. Kim lives in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. She has been married 25 years with twins (boy/girl).

She was an exchange student in Turkey in 1979. The country was under martial law at the time and I can only imagine what that experience was like. Perhaps she will share details about that period this semester. She described it as "life changing".

Kim has taken several on-line courses and looks forward to teaching on-line. She is currently on a very exciting project. Kim is helping launch the Center for Adult Learning at Madison College where she has worked for fifteen years. She is currently teaching project management, Diversity and Change. I am looking to learning about her expertise in these fields throughout the semester.

She has a full schedule and sometimes works late at night. Kim enjoys volunteering her time with Girl Scouts, sports, and church activities.

I enjoyed partnering with Kim this week and looking forward to getting to know her this semester. Carolyn from S.C.

Posted by Kim from UWStout Discussion Board

E- Learning Assessment Week 2 Blog

Week 2 E-assessment blog

Learning notes from reading
The background reading for this week referred to Measurement as a mean to Assessment and Assessment is a to evaluate.


Educational use of blogs -sharing, reflection, debate, and collaboration.
Downsides of blogs- biased, inaccuracies, volatile .

In E-Learning for Educators, the instructor provided the cons and cons of each new online tool option we were asked to use. Explaining the pros and cons provided new users a comfort feeling when signing up for so many new online tools/sites.

Aha moments
My son tells me I pronounce the word Blog incorrectly and need to say Blowg vs Blog.

I have been struggling with the fact that traditional assessment has served some purpose and how does it fit in. These paragraphs from Assessing Student Learning Online: It’s More Than Multiple Choice By Elizabeth Reed Osika, PhD provide insight to the use of traditional assessments.
Use multiple-choice or other objective questions to assess information that provides a foundation for the course, the information they will have to use later to demonstrate their understanding through an authenticate assessment. For example, use a multiple-choice test to make sure the student has read the assigned chapter or at least looked at the page in the chapter to find the appropriate answer. This allows the instructor the opportunity to make sure that each student is familiar with the most important aspects in the text.
If you choose to use objective assessments as a primary assessment strategy in your course, assume your students will use their books and discuss the concepts with friends and write your questions accordingly. In fact, encourage students to use all relevant resources to complete a test, as this best reflects what occurs in real life.

I have to give some deep thought about encouraging students to use all relevant resources when assessing. I know this is the traditional assessment strategy rearing its ugly head, but it is difficult for me to say, ok everyone work together on the final. Just as kids are given resources such as notes for a test. Are we assessing their ability to write down what they don't know on the note sheet, or assessing what they have learned?

Edits to original posts are not easily tracked. I have added information three times to this post, and the post is still marked as 1/18.

Collaboration notes
Viewing others blogs, I noticed some are easy to follow and some are very busy and difficult to find what you want to look at. After looking at others blogs using the same provider, I knew I had to investigate more about how to change how my blog looked and could information without making it look to busy.

I also could see the benefits of using a blog vs. a discussion board. The discussion board seemed very formal and difficult to follow see and follow the discussion. The blog was easier to look and had other information available to click on.

I have gone out and entered comments on several individuals' blog, but can not see the comment showing up because the moderator has not approved the comment. The moderator tool is a great way to manage what is posted on your blog, but also reduces the open conversations because it is dependent on when the moderator accepts the comments.

Kim-Wisconsin