How Can We Make Assessments Meaningful? I think meaningful assessments can come in many shapes and sizes. In fact, to be thoroughly engaging and to draw the best work out of the students, assessments should come in different formats. Thankfully, with the Common Core standards exemplifying the 4Cs -- Creativity and Critical Thinking (through performance-based assessments), Collaboration, and Communication (through the use of interdisciplinary writing) -- we are looking at a more fluid future in testing formats. As long as the format itself is aligned with real-world skills, a meaningful assessment does not need to be lockstep with a particular structure any more. When I think about my own definition of a "meaningful assessment," I think the test must meet certain requirements. Criteria for a Meaningful Classroom Assessment To address these requirements, I ask myself the following guided questions: Does the assessment involve project-based learning? Clearly not all assessments achieve every single characteristic listed above.
Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Lens for Evaluating Online Courses Note: This article was originally published in The Technology Source ( as: Charles Graham, Kursat Cagiltay, Byung-Ro Lim, Joni Craner, and Thomas M. Duffy "Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Lens for Evaluating Online Courses" The Technology Source, March/April 2001. Available online at The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher. The "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," originally published in the AAHE Bulletin (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), are a popular framework for evaluating teaching in traditional, face-to-face courses. We, a team of five evaluators from Indiana University's Center for Research on Learning and Technology (CRLT), recently used these principles to evaluate four online courses in a professional school at a large Midwestern university. Principle 1: Good Practice Encourages Student-Faculty Contact Conclusion References
Example 4: Online Journal Rubric - ELC Support One use of an online journal is to facilitate the documentation of knowledge you are constructing throughout the course. It will help you take control of and direct your own learning experience, identify what you have learned, what questions you have, and what you would like to know more about. You should not only reflect on knowledge gained through materials and discussion, but also new ideas to explore feedback from others. In the modules that have journal items, you will be prompted to write reflections in response to one or two specific questions. These questions will encourage you to use the course content, your prior knowledge, and your experience to craft your responses. Bring your current knowledge and experience into your reflections when appropriate. Reflection is an opportunity to construct knowledge and meaning from your work. Your reflections should be written during the session in which they are being addressed. Online Journal Rubric Total Points: 15 points
Pedagogy and Moodle Let's sit back and really reflect on the pedagogy that is at the core of what we, as online educators, are trying to do. Definition of Pedagogy One definition of pedagogy in Wiktionary says The profession of teaching The activities of educating, teaching or instructing Wikipedia has a much longer page on Pedagogy. Moodle in three short paragraphs The heart of Moodle is courses that contain activities and resources. There are a number of other tools that make it easier to build communities of learners, including blogs, messaging, participant lists etc, as well useful tools like grading, reports, integration with other systems and so on. For more about Moodle, see and particularly the main community “course” called Using Moodle. Social Constructionism as a Referent I have these five points on a slide which I use in every presentation I do. Jason Cole from Open University recently referred to these as “Martin's five laws” (ha!) Finding a balance Progression Community Hubs
Example 3: Online Classroom Attendance and Participation Rubric - ELC Support Hi Class, I want to make sure everyone is clear about the difference between logging on, attendance, and participation. Don't worry, I know week one has a steep learning curve - I take this into account for week one participation. Logging On When we "log on" we might spend a great deal of time reading the course content- please realize that the system can track how long you spend in the course; however, it cannot tell exactly what you are doing. Attendance Attendance is also determined internally by the system. Participation Participation in this course represents a significant part of your final grade. For example, if the course week runs from Monday to Sunday, you might post two messages on Tuesday and two messages on Thursday and two messages on Saturday. Assignments and responses in the Chat room do not count towards participation. I hope this clarifies attendance and participation. Discussion Participation Rubric Total Possible Points: 20 points
Beyond blended learning: Reaching every student At the 2010 NCTIES conference in Raleigh, LEARN NC’s Bobby Hobgood delivered a presentation about blended learning. The archived session is available at the following link: Access to the archived session requires Microsoft Silverlight software. About this presentation Presentation title Beyond blended learning: Reaching every student Presenter Bobby Hobgood, LEARN NC — UNC School of Education Target audience Elementary, middle, high, K-12, administration Presentation goals Viewers of this hour-long presentation will learn what blended learning is, why blended learning is important, current research findings about blended learning, a theoretical framework underpinning the value of blended learning, what blended learning “looks like” in a classroom, and ten ways to improve teaching using a blended approach. Presentation abstract Dr. Dr.
Master List to Create a Blogging Rubric By CheekyLitTeach, on August 18th, 2010 Creating a Rubric to Evaluate Relevant Skills – Image by “Salvatore Vuono” on Free Digital Photos online. First of all, it’s very difficult to ‘borrow’ a rubric that someone else has made for their class, but it is useful for thinking about what criteria you need in your own. Thus, I have made a master list of blogging criteria for the task. Although we teach a spectrum of ages and grades, there are particular criteria that relevant across the grades. Here’s a list of blogging criteria that you could use in your rubric. Blogging Criteria Master List If you have other criteria that you believe should be added to this general list, please make a comment below and I will add it to the post. Please note that this is a general list from which you can choose the criteria that you plan to evaluate according to your course standards or expectations. I would like to give credit to Clarence Fisher who created this rubric and shared it on his blog.
EdTech Cheat Sheet Infographic Understanding New Trends in Educational Technology Trying to keep up with all of the new buzzwords in the booming Educational Technology sector can leave you feeling like a kindergartner in a calculus class. Don't tell your teach, but we put together a little cheat sheet to keep you informed on what's happening inside and outside of today's most innovative schools. Think we're missing any major terms or trends? @GoBoundless Gamification? Virtual Classroom? Digital Storytelling? 1:1 Technology Providing every student with a laptop or tablet to make learning more individualized, increase independence and extend academics beyond the classroom. Also: much cooler than just giving out stickers. Adaptive Learning Software that adapts it's content and pacing to the current knowledge level of the user, so it's almost like having a personal tailor for your education. Asynchronous Learning Blended Learning A sure recipe for success: Optional--Adjust when, where and how students use the online content. E-Books
A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs The pedagogical value and the challenges of integrating student blogging into your teaching is a recurring topic on ProfHacker. Some of our earliest posts dealt with student blogging, and we have revisited the issue frequently. Most recently, Jeff and Julie wrote about that age-old question—How are you going to grade this? I typically require weekly blog posts from my students, and though each post by itself may not amount to much, they cumulatively account for a substantial portion of a student’s final grade. Each student will contribute to the weekly class blog, posting an approximately 500-word response to the week’s readings. Because these posts are online well before class meets, I am able to skim them for recurring themes or concerns, which I often use as beginning points for class discussion. But when you have 15 or 25 posts per week, per class, how do you grade them all? Grades are of course a superficial way of showing students what we value. How about you? Return to Top
Understanding Digital Children - Ian Jukes One element of my professional reading at the moment is reading through Ian Jukes “Understanding digital children (DK's) Teaching & Learning in the New Digital Landscape”. Ian looks at the difference between digital kids and teachers and the impact that this has on teaching and learning. At one point Ian summarises the differences between Native Learners (screenagers) and Teachers. Media Exposure Mark Prensky - in his papers digital natives and Digital immigrants, highlighted the exposure our students have to different forms of media. Increasingly, the readings and research are converging towards the same point. Digital Students@analog Schools - video Digital students@analog schools
The Whiteboard Blog 10 Online Alternatives to PowerPoint for Creating Great Presentations In many schools, Microsoft PowerPoint is still the go-to software when creating presentations. But it does have its limitations, and there’s also the problem of “death by PowerPoint”. Read More L4LTV Launches – Online CPD by Teachers for Teachers Learn 4 Life (L4LTV) is a new web-TV service for the education community, filling the gap left with the demise of Teacher’s TV. ICT, Interactive Whiteboards and Attainment, a literature review This is a short section taken from my Masters Dissertation on the use of ICT by student teachers. IWB TeachMeet Roehampton : Links and Files There was an excellent IWB TeachMeet last night at Roehampton Universty. Making your Interactive Whiteboard POP with BrainPOP UK : Free Webinar I’ve teamed up with those clever people at BrainPOP UK to present one of their free online webinars in a few weeks time. Inanimate Alice Presentation from BETT Now Let’s Write It Up : A Teachmeet Presentation
Adult Learners - Factor Contributing to Issues in eLearning Early Attrition among First Time eLearners: A Review of Factors that Contribute to Drop-out, Withdrawal and Non-completion Rates of Adult Learners undertaking eLearning Programmes Keith Tyler-Smith Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology Christchurch, New Zealand tyler-smithk@cpit.ac.nz Introduction The issue of student retention and completion rates in distance education have been investigated and vigorously argued over for at least the last seven decades (Berge & Huang, 2004). Some have reported attrition from eLearning as high as 70 - 80% (Flood 2002, Forrester 2000, in Dagger & Wade, 2004). Questions about the validity of much of this reporting have been raised as it is argued that statistics on retention and drop outs are, at best, fragmented, do not compare like with like, and are either unreliable and / or misleading (Hall, 2001, Wang, Foucar-Szocki, Griffin, O’Connor and Sceiford, 2003). Models of attrition for distance education Motivation and persistence