FORUM: Assessing Participation
Assessing Participation
Mini-session facilitators will provide direction for this activity.
ISWO Learning Outcomes related to this activity:
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Hello ISWO Participants!
In your final week we will be exploring strategies to assess student participation in online courses. This can be challenging in that assessing each student’s participation in detail can require a great deal of instructor time.
For this discussion we have focused on two different approaches:
Method One
- Randomly select 10 (or some number) of posts per learner and assess those.
- Randomly select 3 (or some other number) of class-wide forums and use those as the basis of participation (done at the end, learners won’t know which forum will be used to assess participation).
Method Two
- Learners do a reflection/self-assessment of their own participation, demonstrating/giving examples (important) and making a case for a particular grade in light of specific criteria given up front
- Learner generated criteria & contracts - Ask learners to write or sign a participation “contract” at the beginning, and a reflection at the end
Your Task:
1. Complete the readings for Week 5.
2. Review one of these methods in terms of the following:
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- The advantages and disadvantages of the method in the context of teaching adult online learners.
- Reflect and report on your beliefs and current practices (you can interview your colleagues about their approach, challenges, and strategies for assessing participation).
- Suggest strategies more suitable for your teaching context and provide rationale for your choice.
Other points to consider for your post include the accuracy, effectiveness, fairness and manageability in terms of instructor effort/time for each method.
Post an initial comment by Tuesday, December 2.
3. Review other students’ comments in the Method 1 and Method 2 topic areas and discuss them. This exercise is intended to promote a discussion informed by your readings, experience and views.
Provide at least one reply by Friday (evening), December 5.
Optional Task:
Create and share an “ideal”, detailed rubric for grading participation in an online course. If you are teaching online, consider your current course. In doing this, you should provide enough information that someone could pick it up and use it. Try to provide an indication why this is your best solution.
Facilitator Office Hours
- Sean Siddals
I will be available in the help forum each night by 10pm (Thursday - Sunday) - if people send a message by then I can respond immediately.
On behalf of the Green Team (Sean, Olivera, Ann and Jennifer) thanks for your participation and enjoy your last week!