Using data to ease the grading process - An Educator's Perspective. I have become an educator and I am teaching a Spanish MOOC with over 1,000 students! They submit weekly assignments that are to be hand graded, and I alone simply cannot meet the task of grading these assignments. Obviously there is no silver bullet, and no proven technology to automatically grade writing assignments. Harvard researchers: frequent tests increase retention in online learning.
It's easy to get distracted--especially when you're in the midst of an online training course that shows no signs of ending.
While most of us can agree on the utility of web-delivered training, we must also face the reality that even the most well-intentioned of learners, when left to their own devices, can be distracted by a sudden beep on their tablet or a buzz of their smartphone. Studies have shown the distractions can be disastrous to concentration: Michigan State researchers found that interruptions as short as 2.8 seconds can double the rate of errors in a sequence-based task.
The question then falls to us: A pair of researchers at Harvard University think they've got part of the answer. In a study run by Daniel Schacter, the William R. "It's not sufficient for a lecture to be short or to break up a lecture as we did in these experiments," Schacter told "You need to have the testing.” Frequent, Low-Stakes Grading: Assessment for Communication, Confidence. April 18, 2013 By: Scott Warnock, PhD in Educational Assessment, Online Education After going out for tacos, our students can review the restaurant on a website.
They watch audiences reach a verdict on talent each season on American Idol. When they play video games—and they play them a lot—their screens are filled with status and reward metrics. Assessing Assessment: Five Keys to Success. April 22, 2013 By: Vickie Kelly, EdD in Educational Assessment There are those in the academic community who dread hearing and reading about assessment.
But aside from the mandatory reporting required by credentialing and accreditation agencies, how can faculty members be sure that all of the assessment activities they are required to report actually produce change and are not just more paperwork? The university where I teach is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and is on the new review cycle. As part of that initiative, members of the university assessment committee, of which I am a member, are charged with reviewing program assessment plans and reporting to the accreditation committee. There are some excellent resources on program assessment that can drive the right questions when assessing assessment. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Assessing Student Learning - five practical guides. ‘If lower-order learning is an unintended educational consequence of on-line assessment, then any perceived or real gains made in efficiency, staff workload reduction and/or cost savings are at a questionable price.’
Why consider on-line assessment? A good deal of investigation and development is underway in Australian universities into the possibilities for effective and efficient on-line and computer-based assessment. The current commercial ‘virtual learning environments’, which integrate various curriculum elements at subject level into a single software portal, usually offer various built-in options for student assessment. As well, many on-line assessment initiatives are being locally developed to suit specific curriculum needs. There are many reasons why on-line assessment is being adopted by Australian universities. The move to on-line and computer based assessment is a natural outcome of the increasing use of information and communication technologies to enhance learning.
Content Mastery and Problem Solving Skills. I recently had the honor to help host a district showcase on the uses of the Canvas LMS. It was set up like “speed dating” where I sat in one place, with my laptop connected to a large monitor, and interested parties moved from table to table, and asked me questions, or watched a demo of how I use the LMS. It was cool. And I got asked many great questions. Most of the specific questions were on quizzes. This is because in my AP and gen. physics classes I give all quizzes on Canvas. One question went something like this, “Well, how do they take the quizzes? It would seem the other teacher viewed quizzes as mini exams.
But I don’t use quizzes that way. Sure some students may be “cheating” a little, asking someone nearby what the answer is when I’m not looking, but generally this is not the case. Ultimately I want my students to master the content of the physics standards, but I don’t want that to happen at the expense of problem solving skills. Create. Share. Learn. Where everyone can create, publish, share and take tests, exercises and assignments. Designing Assignments that Accomplish Course Goals. December 5, 2012 By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog I’m betting that many of you are in the midst of grading a large stack of papers, projects or other final assignments.
Too often these end-of-course pieces of work don’t live up to our expectations or students’ potential. It’s easy for us (especially the elders among us) to bemoan the fact that students aren’t what they used to be.