Kim Hollman's Blog

Week 7 - Final Project

2010-02-23T06:33:00.000-08:00

Final project link

http://sites.google.com/site/kimhollmanelearningportfolio/blog--e-assessment/final-project--personal-change--webinar

Self- Reflection on Project

Three aspects of the project were especially creative or of distinguishable quality.

By providing additional information to the project that was not required, significantly contributed to a well-rounded project and distinguishable quality. By adding webpages on copyright, plagiarism, prevention of plagiarism, and Course Management Systems (CMS), I provided the reader the option to dig deeper into certain topics and provided a great future reference tool. I also included five assessments instead of four, and included five objectives instead of four learning objectives.
Using five assessment tools that were not reviewed previously by mid-term projects and were limited due to what was available in the CMS was challenging and took some creativity. I have only taught one short course online and was not familiar with the tools in Blackboard, which made the final project an extremely meaning learning experience for me. Analyzing the capabilities of each tool, made the selection of the tools easier. I felt using the survey to create a visual of items the user has control over or does not have control over, I believe is a creative use of the survey tool.
Choosing a one-hour webinar course that is an independent study was also challenging and took some creativity. Much of our course work for online is focused on collaborative learning and the Personal Change Management Course is specifically designed for independent study. Using journaling in an independent study course where the facilitator is not truly active in course, posed some challenges to provide feedback. The solution was to provide typical responses to journaling entries reinforcing the ABC’s of Personal Change Management.

Specific improvements that are needed for the final submission.
I am waiting for my classmates’ review of my project to determine what improvements can be made for the final submission. One area I think needs improvement is the linking of pages. When the user reads the introduction page, the four assessment tools are listed at the end. When the user clicks on one, the user links to a separate page. If the user clicks the backarrow, the user will return to introduction page and continue to review the other assessment or the user could click on the subtab on the left. I don't know if I should also provide the links to the other three assessments at the bottom of the page. Placing a 13-page document onto separate webpages was challenging to determine the organization and linking. I am looking forward to my classmates’ comments on the organization of the webpages.

After reviewing the sites of a few of my classmates, one improvement that can be made to my site is adding active links of examples.

Week 6

2010-02-15T22:15:00.000-08:00

Readings
The Learning on Demand report for online education in the US, 2009 was extremely interesting to me because it provide current data regarding online learning for postsecondary. One of the key points that caught my attention included 74% of public institutions believe that online is critical for their long-term strategy, with only 33% of baccalaureate institutions agreeing online learning is critical to their long-term strategy. Less than one-third of chief academic officers believe their faculty accepts the value and legitimacy of online education. The percentage has changed very little over the last six years. Annual growth for online courses 2003 23%, 2004 18%, 2005 76%, 2006 9% 2007 12% and 2008 16% with over 18 million students taking at least one online postsecondary course in 2008 with undergraduate seeing most of the growth.
http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/learningondemand.pdf

As with he FASTRACK program at Madison College this fall, online learning is being used more and more as the backup for major illness outbreaks such as H1N1. I also found astounding that nearly 1/5 of the instructors receive no training in online delivery.

Dr. Khalsa paper was an interesting read showing application of many of the methodology we have learned in E-Learning Certification courses.

E.C. Moore's Symposium" Putting Student Learning First" on
Cybercoaching provides a lot of practical applications on how to use online tools to coach your students. Moore recommends:
1. Using e-mail and online tools for monitoring, feedback, tutoring and assessment.
2. Promoting deeper thinking by allowing responses with no right or wrong answers.
3. Using familiar technology, which allows a focus on coaching vs. learning new technology.
4. Developing and using rubrics for formative and summative assessments.

Moore also encourages using a pre-assessment to determine prior knowledge, self-assessment for formative and monitoring, and finally a summative assessment.

Ah Ha’s
I have spoken to several students who are finishing up the E-Learning certification and wished they had accumulated all of their artifacts in one E-Portfolio. This week I spent some time putting the artifacts from E-Learning and E-Assessment on my webpage, along with linking key articles.

Class Discussion
This week one of the other students commented on my practice of taking person phone calls at home. She commented how her mother was a teacher and felt her mother at times the mother spent more of her personal time with students vs. her own children. I really appreciated the commented and reflected on my own practice. I primarly teach returning adults who may not have been in school for 20 plus years and can become extremely frustrated with understanding what to do and how to use the technology. I can empathize with them based on my experiences of going back to graduate school and taking onlne courses from two different Universities.

I typically only get 5-6 calls during a six week period, which I think is reasonable. The students are in a co-hort that complete the program together over 18 months. I have the students multiple times throughout the program and really make connections with each of the students.

Pre-assessment for Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GYRHP5V

Week 5 Taxonomy of Assessment

2010-02-09T17:32:00.000-08:00

Readings
I see more and more "opportunities" with authenticity. I was pleased the readings this week highlighted specific ways to increase authenticity and decrease the opportunity for plagiarism. "The use of a range of assessment methods reduces or minimizes the problem of authentication." Hyde 2004. Threats of plagiarism are more likely to evaporate as the assessment taxonomy levels increase. Third party evidence can also sometimes be used and authentic workplace demonstration. "When assessment plans require teamwork, integration of concepts, authentic presentations, and realistic and immediate application, there is less chance of unethical behavior. Additionally, instructors who design progressive assessment requiring that pieces build toward a final project are less likely to face the challenges of unethical behavior."(lecture notes).

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom This website provides ideas for Bloom's taxonomy digitally.

I found the assignment of taking the in-class activities and matching it Bloom's taxonomy challenging. I found many of the activities falling into multiple levels.

I liked the simple ABCD for writing objectives extremely helpful. A= Audience, B= Behavior, C= Condition, and D = Degree of accuracy .

An example of Bloom's Taxonomy applied to a Journalism class can be found on my home page under the tab Blog for E-Assessments. http://sites.google.com/site/kimhollmanelearningportfolio/

Ah Ha Moments
The Diigo site I set up last semester with favorite URLs has proven to be very helpful. The ABCD objective writing will also be helpful. Regardless if a class is online or not, I want to try to start using more "technology" related assessments. Using technology is a skill set all students need to be come comfortable with.

Class Discussions
Sometimes it is difficult to open documents. I enjoyed looking at how other people turned in classroom assignments to online assessments. The assignment seemed so clear, yet everyone did it a little differently. With online instruction, providing an example is beneficial because you can not read the body language if the class is confused. At the same time, providing an example may limit creativity. Last week and this week the class used Breeze to have a real time discussion. Both times I was unable to attend and feel like I am at a disadvantage. This is an online class and specific time commitments were required, although I understand how the real time online discussion could be helpful.

Week 4 Online Assessment Tools

2010-02-06T04:05:00.000-08:00

Week 4 Online Assessment Tools
Readings

http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/assessment.html

The above site provides a wealth of information about flexible learning and online assessment. From the reading this week I wanted to retain reference to the website and two charts found in the reading.

Some of the online options listed in the literature include:

Written assignments
Essays
Online quizzes and questions
Collaborative assignment work
Portfolios
Online Exams (open-book; structured; timed)
Practicals
Participation in online discussions
Publication of student work /presentations
Experiential activities, such as role-play
Debates
Reviews
Journals and reflection

Assessment can be by: teacher, self, peer, or by an external person or group.

McLoughlin and Luca (2001) demonstrate just one way student activity and assessment processes can be integrated in participatory forms of assessment:

1. Student contributions to the unit, 2. Interactive assessment activities
Attending 1. Design and develop team web site, 2. Intra-team peer review
Practicing 1. Post solutions to weekly problems, 2. Intra-team peer review
Discussing 1. Post weekly journals, 2. Inter-team peer review and commitment to tasks
Articulating 1. Develop electronic portfolio, 2. Critique and peer feedback on portfolios
1. Develop a team contract outlining team responsibilities,2. Negotiate roles and commitments for each team member

Ah Ha Moments

I enjoyed reading the reviews of the different online tools. The Wiki Choice tool , http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php that assists individuals in selecting the appropriate Wiki will be helpful. The tool reviews also highlighted the functionality difference available along with the costs. It is amazing what is available for free. There are of course drawbacks such as data not being maintained.

The use of online tools brings the issue of security, authenticity, and hacking to the top of the discussion.

Collaboration

The group project brought challenges this week with the timing of individuals logging in, the request for responses and no responses given, and different interpretations of instructions. When working on group projects in an onsite classroom, questions can be asked and issues can be resolved within minutes. Online the timing of logging increases the ability of the team to move forward. Our group resorted to phone calling, which helped us resolve issues quite quickly.

The group I worked with was productive and each of us brought different strengths to the team.Carol was willing to try some new adventures, Dale brought the perspective of comparing and reviewing previously done assignments, and I got us started with organizing the assignment.

Our toolbox

http://midterm-assessment-uws.wikispaces.com/

Week 3 Mind Mapping and other assessment tools

2010-01-29T03:29:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-20T07:23:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-20T06:19:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-18T19:24:00.001-08:00

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