Collaborative Learning & Discussion Boards

This week's activity for the Online Assessment course involves a third form of assessment which is actually unique to the online environment - Collaborative Projects and Discussion Forums. Below is the initial Discussion Prompt for the two activities.

Discussion Prompt – for Week 7
In the last few weeks, you’ve learned and applied your understanding about online assessment as it is applied to written tests and performance-based tests. This week you’ve read about a third area where assessment can be applied. That area is collaborative activities such as discussion forums and group projects.

For the next two weeks, you will have the opportunity to practice collaboration in the effort to create a Checklist of Necessities for the 4 phases of a discussion activity. The 4 phases are Design, Preparation, Moderating, and Evaluation. Each class member will be assigned to one of the phases.  [Here is the link to the GROUP ASSIGNMENTS .]    Communicating and working together, each group will be expected to create a collectively generated and agreed upon checklist of the actions, objects, or concepts needed to successfully accomplish that phase in establishing an online discussion forum.

Use the resources from the posted lesson, especially Chapter 9 Design for the Virtual Classroom from William Horton’s book E-Learning by Design (website to course). Find at least two additional but outside resources for your reference list that provide information helpful to expand and confirm the elements listed in the lesson resources.  Put team member’s name on the checklist document you create. Each of you will need to hyperlink the checklist to your discussion posting for Week 7.

Title your link with the Name of Your Phase & Last Name, First. MODERATING – Capone, Alphonse

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 



This particular post is scheduled as a two-week activity rather than the usual Post by Wednesday - Respond by Sunday.  The reason is because this is really two activities: a Checklist with References and a Discussion Post.  Here is an overview of both activities and the timeline for completion.

 Week 6 – By Friday

Communicate with the members of your group. Assign roles and responsibilities. Decide upon the tasks needed to complete your part in this project. Establish a schedule. Develop and share your individual research to generate a collective checklist. Evaluate, add or eliminate items; in essence reach consensus. Consider using a wiki as the medium for communicating and sharing your ideas. Consider web-conferencing for a synchronous meeting among the members of the team.

 Week 6 – By Sunday

Proofread and edit. Decide upon the "appearance" for your document – layout, fonts, sizes, graphics, links, etc. Create a professional-looking checklist, including a reference list (3 sources minimum), as a PDF document. Complete and submit to the appropriate dropbox your private evaluation of everyone’s work effort and output by using the rubric provided. Here is a link to the Peer-Evaluation RUBRIC.  Everyone should review the rubric early to understand the expectations.

Week 7 - By Wednesday

Reach concensus within your group on the sources and the checklist so that each member can post the checklist and references as a link in the initial posting to the Discussion Board.  Along with the link to your group's checklist, write a post that explains the phase to which you were assigned.  What was your group tasked to do?  Describe also the process of working collaboratively for this project (successes / difficulties).  Did collaboration work well for your group?  Provide a defense or criticism of Discussion Forums for online instruction as a means to assess what a student learns and the depth of that understanding and application.  Do Forums work as an instructional technique?  Should they be evaluated?  Remember to support your position with evidence from sources and/or experience.

Use subheadings to identify the three parts to this week's posting, but also add approppriate transition words so that the three sections are connected to form a unified essay.  Consider how textbooks smoothly connect sections and paragraphs with good transitioning.  As usual, make sure to proofread and edit your submission so that it can be easily read and understood.  So this week's post calls for
                         1.)     a link to your checklist and references;
                         2.)     explanation of your group's phase of the operation;
                         3.)     description of the collaborative process within your group;
                         4.)     defense or criticism of discussion forums;
                         5.)     reference list

Week 7 - By Sunday

For this week you will be participating in another form of collaboration by reading, responding and sharing with at least two groups representing other phases in developing a Discussion Forum.

First, click on the link in a person’s Initial Post to note the checklist.  Did it seem complete?  Are there other thoughts or ideas you think should be added to the list?  Now read the Initial Posting to see how this person described the phase of the operation and whether the collaborative process seemed to work well for the group.  Was the explanation of the process similar to your group when it came to collaboration?  Did your group approach collaboration differently?  Was it because they represent a different phase than your group?  Lastly, read what the person said about Discussion Forums.  Hopefully s/he, as well as you, were frank and honest. Within the rules of good netiquette, respond to the person’s view with your own now informed opinion concerning Discussion Boards.

In addition to submitting your Initial Posting and Response to two other groups, return to your own submission; read and respond to any class members who have read your posting concerning your group’s checklist and your personal commentary about the Discussion Board topic and the collaborative process used in making the checklist.   Here is the link to the DISCUSSION BOARD RUBRIC.  Review it both before and after preparing your response so you understand what is expected.

 

Plagiarism - Is it the route to perdition?

It’s ironic to think that a society that espouses the value of freedom and access to information must also become concerned with the value of protecting one’s intellectual property from infringement brought about by the theft of information.  But then I suppose there always will be the inevitable imbalance between those that have and those who don’t have.  Under these circumstances, usually such theft is clearly intentional.  In the world of academia the irony is perhaps even more greatly poignant because the intent of education – including higher education – is to obtain information in an effort to better oneself.  The concept of “open access” would seem to be paramount; but it isn’t. 

In academia we strive to maintain the balance between access to information and the theft – intentional or accidental – of information.  Academia thus creates a corollary to the concept of access to information known as plagiarism.  An interesting distinction is made then between “access” to information as opposed to the “kidnapping” of that information; for that is the morphological origin of the word plagiarism.  I suppose we can elevate the importance of this concept if we consider a favorite debate strategy known as “slippery slope.”  A minor infraction of a rule will eventually give way to nuclear destruction and the collapse of society; therefore, it must not be allowed to exist at any level in order to deter such destruction.

Actually plagiarism may not prove to be that devastating, but it does raise the question of moral turpitude.  And one might ask if that is what should be feared most beyond the actual theft of information.  To this we must also consider the character of our perpetrators; there is a grave distinction between a middle schooler committing the act of plagiarism and that of an adult in higher education.  For both the sin may be one of ignorance of the rules; for both it may be a matter of desperation, but how we as educators handle the situation should certainly not be monolithic.

In a democratic and literate society the custom is to consider proactive or preemptive measures and to communicate and educate both the circumstances of plagiarism and the methods for avoiding it.  In this way we trust in the integrity of the individual to preserve the integrity of academia and by extension society.  Our intent isn’t to teach the learner how to fool the system, but to understand how it can occur that one may cross the line between “access” to information and “kidnapping” that information.   This is why colleges, for example, may make their detection system available to students.  If as a student I genuinely want to avoid plagiarizing a paper – out of an interest in integrity or a fear of its repercussion if caught – having access to a detection system allows me the opportunity to run my paper through it to find questionable passages so that I can correct and amend it before official submission to the professor.

Access to tutorials through the library staff or the professor is another proactive strategy.  Tutorials can provide opportunities to understand the elements of plagiarism and to practice methods of correcting or avoiding it.  Of course, offering such opportunities is an “assumption of good will,” trusting to the integrity of the individual.  What can be done for the student who commits the sin of plagiarism because he’s also committed the sins of procrastination and apathy?  Is it a matter of punishing as a consequence after the commission of plagiarism, or is it a matter of designing the activity to limit the incidence of plagiarism?  A professor might be adept enough to create an activity that allows collaboration, and therefore the sharing of information is encouraged.  The professor could also consider an “open” assessment such as a “take-home” essay exam.  Given the prompts well in advance, the student has the opportunity to ponder the question and his response and even to survey the past readings for support.  Such strategies openly encourage the use of resources and make the issue of documentation less stressful but rather more ordinary.

What if a course is more skill-oriented than concept development, calling for a more factual approach to understanding and mastery?  For those assessments that aren’t subjective, essay-response activities, probably the use of a bank of objective questions can be considered from which can be develped multiple forms of the test.   With today’s computers and available software, it is possible to randomize the questions in an effort to create multiple versions of an assessment.  With this capability, it might be possible then to allow “do-overs” if a student fails to achieve mastery on the first attempt.

You may have noticed that throughout this entire entry, there isn’t a single instance of documentation.  Is this because I waited until the last minute to write it and just couldn’t find the time to back up my generalizations with authoritative support?  Or is this the type of topic that calls more for personal perspective?  Would this message be strengthened with the inclusion of specific information and therefore documentation from authoritative and published sources?  Or would such documentation tend to slow down the message?

What do you think?  Have I plagiarized?   Or have I shown some understanding of the issue and been able to extend it beyond the collective readings on the topic?

Establishing the Online Environment

        

How many of us are old enough to remember Max Headroom? This is a character from a 1980’s TV series about a newsman who escapes a threat to his life by becoming digital and operating within a computer. The character is only seen as a human image via the old-time clunky computer monitors of the era. 

I often like to make unusual allusions especially to pop culture to see if there are any students who tend to think and operate beyond their own world. To help students understand that there is a real person on the other end of their computer I often make reference to Max Headroom. In doing so, I’m trying to break through the electronic barrier and distance associated with computers before the advent of social media and mobility.

In a very real way the primary goal of a teacher’s preparation of the online environment for students is to make it seem personable.Palloff and Pratt in this week’s video (n.d.) provide a number of great suggestions for humanizing instruction which will occur through distance learning.Much of the success in creating the desirable online experience calls for the instructor to personalize the environment and to think and respond proactively.They for example mention a simple strategy used in face-to-face instruction which is to get on a first name basis with the student. They also suggest drawing out the reluctant student by engaging in private communication to discover the reason for their resistance to a fuller participation.

Boettcher and Conrad (2010) approach the issue of preparation by considering the tools and technology that the student will be using.Just as one checks a flashlight by turning it on and off before journeying into the darkness, the online teacher should make sure that students will have access to the right tools for the planned activities and also make sure that the tools and links are operational. It’s similar to the pilot walking around and checking the perimeter of his plane while on the ground as well as going through any pre-flight check with the engine revving up.

When I first started working with a computer, I generally would allow for more wait time for a download or for a video to start.With a bit more experience, though, I’ve noted that I’ve become as bad as my high school students in that if it doesn’t work right away, I’m off to a new site.My experience expects the technology to be operational and if it isn’t, it establishes a critical attitude toward the site and learning, a breach of the trust that the technology will and should work first time and every time.

E-learnspace.org provides a rather thorough analysis of the preliminaries that are important to assure the success of an online experience.Its web article “Preparing Students for Elearning” (n.d.) considers the prerequisites of the “ecosystem” as well as the prerequisite skills of the instructor and the student.It mentions the need for support documents that provide the explanation that the traditional teacher gives orally from the front of the room.Such documents explain how to use the tools but also convey the expectations for performance: staying on schedule, communicating, procedure for executing an activity, methods of evaluation, listing of assignments, etc.

An instructor is not only the “subject matter specialist” for any course, but the instructor also is a model for students.The more inexperienced a student is, the more he relies - whether he is aware of it or not - upon the instructor to show him how it is done, or where the bar is set for successful completion of the assignments.Consequently, the instructor must be able to use the tools “fluidly” and be able to explain the use of those tools.There probably will be times when the student’s knowledge of the technology exceeds that of the instructor, but the instructor needs to have practiced with each of the tools that technology has to offer.

Palloff and Pratt also spend a good deal of time discussing the first activities one creates that will establish the right mindset for the online experience.Because the online experience relies heavily on social learning and collaboration, it becomes necessary to establish a learning community that supports these important elements of learning.Beginning a course in “Week Zero” with activities not related to course content initiates the development of the learning community.Establishing a personable biography and later participating in an icebreaker activity helps bridge the isolation gap evident in online instruction and begins to establish a community that will operate on the basis of good communication as well as cooperation and collaboration among the students and with the instructor.

If for no other reason, such opening activities go a long way toward helping students realize that “Max Headroom” is a real person who resides at the other end of their computer.If he’s real and he approaches you in a humanizing and personable way, how could you not respond in kind and make the decision that you are going to try to do your best and get something out of the course.How could it not help to establish a positive experience?

References:

Boettcher, J.V., & Conrad, R. (2010). The online teaching survival guide: simple and practical pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Elearningspace.com (n.d.). Preparing students for elearning. Retrieved from http://www.elearningspace.org/Articles/Preparingstudents.htm

Max Headroom [image]. bing.com/images/search?q=max headroom

Max Headroom (TV Series). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)

Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (n.d.). Online Learning Communities [video]. Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6493411&Survey=1&47=7443671&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Building a Community of Learning in the Online Environment

To develop our understanding of online instruction and to address many of the issues and concerns of this way of teaching, one must think of the environment, the virtual classroom, as a community.  Community as a vocabulary word is derived from the root word “munio” which means “build.”  But it’s not a construction performed solely by the instructor.  The prefix “com” incorporates the idea that the building process is a joint endeavor.  The student has a responsibility in the construction of his own learning and his learning environment also.  In that sense then the student and teacher are partners, and the professor takes on a role different than the traditional center-stage source for the learning.  It also suggests that the student is expected to be a “professional participant” as Dr. Keith Pratt reveals in the video “Online Learning Communities” (n.d.).

As a community, it’s important to establish the purpose of it and the parameters for it.  This the instructor sets up before students enter the virtual classroom.  He prepares the way, as he would in a traditional classroom, by posting the syllabus which outlines the purpose for the course and the guidelines which outline the way all participants are to conduct their efforts.  A website devoted to model train enthusiasts will establish the specific way in which the site will address the interest in model trains.

Something else, beyond course content and establishing the why and how of the course, that the instructor will consider ahead of time is the logistics of the technology.  He needs to be familiar and comfortable with all the tools that the students will use, and just as in a traditional course, he needs to check everything out before the first student arrives.  Are all the lessons open and accessible, or has clear notification been made to the learners that the lessons will open upon completion of the requisite activities of the previous lesson?  Is the sequence of the lessons and access to the materials established?  Nothing will probably turn a student off faster than to face technology that doesn’t work.  Is the navigation clear and easy with no broken links?

To help the community work effectively, the participants may need training in the use of the technology.  Drs. Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt in “Online Learning Communities” both agreed that exposure to too much technology at once, especially for the “native immigrant,” may be overwhelming and create anxiety and a negative force working against the intent to build a successful online experience.  Dr. Pratt further mentions that the online experience may not be for everyone and thus recommends that participants attend an orientation mini-course that explains the expectations of the students but also provides opportunities to learn and practice the technology before proceeding to the academic side of the course.  I might add that the orientation should include simulations which replicate not only the typical activities but also the time-restraints associated with online instruction.  I might add even further that for high school students and their parents that an online course needs to be advertised in a realistic fashion and not be “sugar-coated” as an “easy” alternative to face-to-face instruction.  One of the first concepts to dispel then is the notion of self-pacing.  No course that is presented for credit can be self-paced until the educational institution is ready to establish the logistics and management for open-ended completion of a course.

I’m glad to see that our course work will focus on a major factor of success in the online environment, i.e., social presence.  In traditional classes the relationship between student and teacher has as much value as the academics.  The “affective domain” is for some, especially for the student who needs greater support, just as important as the course content.  In the online environment, the separation by the internet between the participants requires even more of an effort to build the community with emotional mortar.  A bond needs to be established (instructor to student and student to student) that can minimize a natural anxiety generated by the isolation. As such it’s important to emphasize early – before the class begins through the orientation module and the welcome letter/e-mail/audio podcast/video introduction - the collective and collaborative aspect of online instruction.  The collaboration more than likely will be simple through the discussion board or more elaborate through group activities.

Drs. Palloff and Pratt also mention in “Online Learning Communities” the importance of the instructor’s careful observation, especially in the first few weeks, and response to students who may gravitate to the periphery of the course.  The instructor must be proactive and reach out to the student to be inviting and to assist.  He will want to draw the student back into the course and that may simply be the idea of showing that there’s a real person on the other end of the computer or providing assistance with the technology or the content of the course.  Encouragement as well as explanation goes a long way toward showing students that someone cares.  Content + Support (academic, technological, moral, emotional) increase the chances of success in the online experience and become important building blocks in our constructing a community for learning.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (n.d.)  Online learning communities.  [Video]  Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt. [Presenters]  Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6493411&Survey=1&47=7956863&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1