My Discussion Posts for this week:
Strategies for Assessing Reading and
Writing Online
I completely
agree with the arguments presented in The Case for Authentic
Assessment. Multiple-choice tests
are helpful as formative assessments and
are easiest to create and score online, but given online, there is a
huge potential that students will cheat. (For interesting reading on this
topic, see the Chronicle of Higher
Education 3-part series – especially the third part – easily found with a
search on Google – the series is called “Cheating Lessons”).
Of course
preventing cheating online is not impossible.
There are some software programs that have lockdown browsers (Respondus
is one, which my college offers and is integrated with Blackboard), and at my
college, many online credit courses have the requirement that students to take
midterms or finals in the campus proctoring center.
All in all, though,
we probably need to view online tests we assign as practice opportunities for
students rather than real assessment. As
Wiggins writes, “While
multiple-choice tests can be valid indicators or predictors of academic
performance, too often our tests mislead students and teachers about the kinds
of work that should be mastered. Norms are not standards; items are not real
problems; right answers are not rationales.”
Don’t we want to assess how students can use their English
to accomplish tasks that require them to listen, read, writing, and speak? Traditional tests don’t do this very well,
but authentic assessment certainly challenges online teachers to think outside
the box, take on technology learning to find the right tools suitable to the
assessments, as well as provide technology training to students to be able to
complete authentic assessments online.
Also, as the article Principles
of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning mentions, all stakeholders
should play a role in assessments, and authentic assessment has the advantage
of “… providing
parents and community members with directly observable products and
understandable evidence concerning their students' performance; the quality of
student work is more discernible to laypersons” (Wiggins).
I also read the Merlot article Online Assessment
Strategies: A Primer which discusses matching assessment techniques to
learning objectives (Bloom’s Taxonomy), as well as issues of cheating in the
online environment.
After reading
this article, I did a Google search to find out what sort of authentic online
assessments I could do online because I’m having a hard time envisioning how to
transform some F2F assessments to the online environment. I found this interactive wheel Bloom’s
Taxonomy Circle Diagram. When the
outer gold-colored part of the circle is selected, there are activities
listed. For example, for “Evaluation,”
the activities listed are the following: Comparison of standards, conclusion,
court trial, editorial, establishment of standards, group discussion,
recommendation, self-evaluation, survey, valuing. All of these types of “activities” could lend
themselves to authentic assessments in ESL, with checklist and/or rubric scoring.
Other Bloom /
online-environment-related resources I have on my bookmarks are the following:
Online
tool for assessment
Description
This site is great for creating reading, vocabulary, and
even writing quizzes that are interactive online with many different question
types (blank boxes and dropdowns, drag and drop, matching, multiple choice,
checkboxes, and essay/open-ended questions) with customizable feedback on
students’ answers. Insert multimedia (images, videos, audio) in quizzes. You
can set time and attempt limits. Create classes and view students’ scores.
Quizzes can be shared with a link or embedded. See help center at https://www.learnclick.com/quiz/help for more information on creating
quizzes.
Benefits – Easy to
use. Practical. Great option for
teachers who don’t have access to an LMS.
Drawbacks
– With a free subscription, you can only generate PDF files (see the
sample I created). To unlock the full
potential of the site, you need to subscribe https://www.learnclick.com/site/subscribe $25 – 39 per year for all features. I
wouldn’t purchase the subscription because I do have access to an LMS that can
do everything on this site, but the site is easier to use. I probably will use the PDF generated quizzes
now and then, though.
Online
tool for feedback on student writing
Description
Students can share Google docs and presentations with you,
and you can add voice comments and annotations. When a student responds to or
acts on the feedback, the teacher receives a notification in the dashboard and
an email. Students likewise receive
notifications when you post need feedback. The Kaizena videos on YouTube show you how to use this tool.
Benefits -- Free. “Veedback” integrated with Google docs; no
need for external software or downloads
Drawbacks
? not sure – will need to
experiment with it. I believe that
students could compose on MS Word, upload to Google drive, and then share. After I practice I will let you know how it
compares to Jing…
Also found:
It has four sections:
1. Quill Proofreader - passages that have grammatical
errors placed in them - students locate errors.
2. Quill
Grammar -- teaches grammatical concepts through sentence writing
exercises.
3.
Quill Writer - two-player activity; students take turns writing a
passage together from a shared list of words.
4.
Sentence Shuffle - rearrange sentences from a text into the
correct order.
Web
2.0 tools
Over
the years I have used and had students use numerous Web tools; it's hard to
pick just one that's a favorite or that I use more often than most.
However, since we have mostly been looking at writing as paragraphs and
essays, I thought I'd include a Web tool that is for more sentence-level
writing: dialogs. From grammar to problem scenarios to parts of speech to
verb tenses and vocabulary, students at all levels can be assigned to write
dialogs and digitize them with this incredibly easy-to-use site:
URL http://www.dvolver.com/
Description
Site
for making animated cartoons. Types/# of characters: Maximum of two
characters per scene; 33 edgy characters (from Fabio-like "Stud" to
Uncle Sam to Jimi Hendrix impersonator "Mojo"). Types/# scenes: 15
genres of background music; up to three scenes; 15 backgrounds, 12 skies, 4
plots (rendezvous, pick-up, chase, soliloquy), four title designs;
Dialog: Up to six lines of text per scene, maximum 100 characters per
line of dialog; text in speech bubbles; Saving and sharing: No registration
necessary; sharing by email (URL link) or html code embedded on a Web page;
cannot be edited or changed at a later time. See Russell
Stannard’s Teacher Training Video.
Benefits – Easy enough for novice computer users to use.
I have used it with beginning – advanced students. I rarely have to
demo the site beyond the first couple of screens. They love it! Super fun!
Guaranteed to bring laughter to the classroom.
Drawbacks – Once a movie is “rendered,” it cannot be
changed. There are not commenting options. Each line of dialog is
limited to 100 characters of text (single space after periods). Some characters
are “racy,” so if you have hyper-conservative students or very young students,
you may not want to have them use the site or limit which characters they can
use. My students always choose the Hugh Hefner playboy guy and
his scantily-clad playboy bunny girl.
How
I have used the site:
- Students learn idioms each week related to our
reading/writing/conversation themes. For homework, they ask native
or fluent speakers of English to explain (define or provide an anecdote)
the assigned idioms. Then, in class we discuss the meanings,
source/history of the idiom (if any), and come up with sample sentences,
with students recording all. At the end of the term, students
(individually or in pairs) write dialogs using an idiom or search for a
new idiom to teach the class. They use the site to digitize their
dialogs and present to the class.
- Students learn phrasal verbs (get up, go out, hand
in, etc. – Amy is familiar with these because we use the same Fundamentals of English
Grammar textbook/workbook).
I create conversation questions and discussion board prompts that require
them to use the phrasal verbs. Again, at the end of the term, they
write dialogs using a specified number of phrasal verbs, digitize the
dialogs with Dvolver, and present to the class.
Examples
of former students’ movies:
Sample Phrasal Verbs Project
Sample Idiom Project
More
ideas for using the site:
- Teachers can create cartoons to use
to introduce a topic for a class reading, to spark a discussion, or to
pose a question to the class or a problem to solve.
- Students can create cartoons from
any dialogs they write, with purposes ranging from practicing a grammar
structure or vocabulary word to dramatizing a role play for a given
scenario.
- Teachers can make cartoons to
introduce or reinforce vocabulary, and students can be assigned to write
scripts that demonstrate their comprehension of given vocabulary words or
learned idioms.
- Both students and teachers can show
do's and don'ts for a given scenario or problem; teach and learn about or
have a debate; have opportunities to participate in listening
comprehension exercises.
- Students can be assigned to respond
to a reading or a class discussion topic, as in this example: We read in class about
changing gender roles of men and women in modern society. Respond by
writing a story/script for a mini movie or writing a dialog to give your
opinion or experience with this topic.
- Students can make news reports or
give opinions on current events or political issues.
- Make commercials or a movie review.
- Tell jokes or stories or write the
dialog for a short story or the ending of an open-ended story.
Sites similar to Dvolver:
I also have students do similar
projects with comic strip
sites:
Instructor’s
Message for this week:
Dear
Kristi,
Congratulations!
You have completed all course requirements, and I have submitted a grade of C
for course completion. I want to also thank you for your valued contributions
to the course. Your insights, online tools for reading, vocabulary, writing,
and assessment provided helpful resources and additional context for more in
depth discussions. I especially like the extensive list of assessment resources
on your wiki page including Google Forms, Blubbr, and Classmarker.
Your
final project lesson plan provides a reflection of your experience as a teacher
and clearly demonstrates your understanding of how to integrate technology to
support the language learning process. Thank you also for sharing some of your
ideas that you have published in the OTAN newsletter. Your lesson plan on symbolism provides an
engaging, interactive, and meaningful experience that incorporates many tech
resources to support the learning process.
I like your use of an in-class oral presentation and final reflection
for assessment. You have an incredible amount of patience and stamina, moving
ahead in the course even with a crashed computer. Great job and thank you for
your hard work on this.
It
was a pleasure working with you, and I wish you much success in the certificate
program. I will look forward to reading
more of your contributions to OTAN.
Please do keep in touch and feel free to contact me at any time.
Warm
regards,
Sandy
Resources
from this week:
Required Reading Articles
The Case for Authentic
Assessment, Practical Assessment,
Research and Evaluation, 1990 - note: while
this article dates back to 1990, topic relevancy applies to many aspects of
assessment today when considering language proficiency as the transfer of
knowledge learned anywhere into use in authentic, real-life situations
|
Additional Articles
Feel free to peruse this
extensive list and add other comments.
- What's
It Worth: Certificates, Badges, and Online Portfolios
- Effective
Online Assessment Strategies for Today's Colleges and Universities
- Instructional
Media Selection Guide (from USDLA), very
extensive information on all forms of distance learning and resources
- Ethics
and Distance Education, Strategies for minimizing
academic dishonesty in online assessment,Online Journal of Distance
Learning Administration, 5
- Digital Blooms
Technology, Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms
Digitally, Tech&Learning, April 2008
- (Rowe,
N. (2004). Cheating in online student assessment: Beyond plagiarism. Online
Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 7 (2), http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer72/rowe72.html
- Assessing
learning objectives Bloom's taxonomy,http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/assessment/bloomtaxonomy.asp; Retrieved
June 21, 2007, from Illinois Online Network Web site:
- Online
assessment strategies: A primer, http://jolt.merlot.org/vol6no1/sewell_0310.pdf (Sewell,
J., Frith, K., Colvin, M. (March, 2010). Merlot Journal of Online
Teaching and Learning. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
- Electronic
Portfolios. Assessment Update, http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/assmt/webcorner/webcorner13.htmlinformation
and links to examples of electronic portfolios ( Eder, D., Schechter,
E., & Testa, Retrieved June 21, 2007
- A
New Direction in Feedback, http://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec08/mart04.htm
- Creating
Meaningful Performance Assessments, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED381985.pdf
- Using
Instructional Design to Implement Constructivist E-Learning, https://sites.google.com/a/boisestate.edu/edtech504/using-instructional-design-to-implement-constructivist-e-learning-1
- Educational
Uses of Digital Storytelling, http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/
- Making
the Grade: the Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli3019.pdf
Create Online Quizzes (These
are all free)
Gather feedback
(surveys, opinion polls etc.)
Rubrics
Portfolio Assessment
Presentation Software
Online Whiteboards
