Assessment of Online Learning Environments
The topic of learner engagement is an important one when considering the assessment of learning within a collaborative environment, such as a learning community. As one needs to be accountable for their own choices, one needs to be accountable for their own participation and direction in learning. How does this affect the assessment of the individual within this community? Siemens points out that “...rather than having the educator being the sole individual doing all of the assessment, we can now have a group of learners help to assess.” (Siemens, 2008). By rating peers based on a scale or written feedback, the individual student can obtain criticism, advice and opinion. Likewise, as one who is part of this learning community, the individual gains insight from assessing other members’ work. The value of the task of assessing one’s peers is that the individual is able to obtain critical thinking skills in order to respond to each member in a worthwhile manner.
As with any new environment, some individuals are not familiar with or comfortable with learning as a community. The team must recognize each individual for their strengths, be aware of any weaknesses or areas of discomfort, and work together to achieve success. If this is not happening within any learning community, such as lack of interaction, participation or a breakdown in communication, the facilitator or instructor would need to step into the community as a support. In doing so, the instructor can utilize some team building activities, such as role play as suggested by Siemens (2008). These activities need to focus on the building of trust within the community. Trust is a core need in order for the group to successfully build upon their learning, and without this, the group would be unable to progress. As rules are established and trust is built, the community of learners also needs to have assessments which reflect the most important aspects of learning within a community. The focus on participation within a rubric would highlight its significance, and bring awareness to each individual the requirements of such a course.
Siemens, G. (2008)Assessment of collaborative learning featuring George Siemens, Transcript of video, Laureate Education, Inc. (2008)
Siemens, G. (2008) Learning Communities featuring George Siemens, Transcript of video, Laureate Education, Inc. (2008)
2 comments:
Hi Jeannine -- I use a peer assessment exercise in one of the classes I facilitate online and I think it does help students frame their understanding of the materials and assessment of their own work within the guidelines of the rubric provided in the course. My students do offer surprising feedback to their peers at times. Other students simply skimp on the exercise overall. Yet, from the feedback I receive from the exercise, I do think it helps students grasp the material for the right reasons if that makes sense. While I say that I also bite my tongue because of constructivist principles in terms of students deriving meaning for themselves. However, by collaborating through feedback, students are afforded yet another means by which they might learn. I agree that collaborative assessment practices may help reinforce course concepts for students and can imagine that this practice might become more commonplace in online collaborative environments.
Shane.
I think peer feedback is crucial in a distance learning format. In brick and mortar classes, especially in beginning types of classes such as English 101, it is explicitly built in. In other classes, it tends to naturally occur as students form study groups in courses, or work on group projects. I think in distance learning it has to be explicit in order for this to happen. I liked what Shane mentioned about using some type of scale. I started do this with my middle schoolers, who use the traffic light colors to score eachothers work. They liked it so much that I expanded this "scale" to use it on informal practice tasks such as classwork and homework. In this class, we do it by posting certain tasks - such as our outlines - to our blogs to get peer feedback.
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