Week Five General Discussion

Why have assessment at all?

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:04:09 GMT

by Ken Masters.

The issue of assessment in a MOOC has been worrying me (and, I'm sure, others), from the start of the course. But do we need assessment at all? Or rather, why should assessment be assumed to be coupled to a course? Why don't we separate the two?

Yes, I know that "assessment drives learning." Well, there are an awful lot of people in this course right now who are learning, and who know that they won't be assessed. And we've all attended workshops that don't give a qualification, but we've still learnt hard. So why not have courses like this that focus on the learning, and then have independent assessors assess knowledge about a subject - there appears to be no reason to have the 2 tied together in the same environment.

For example, I am currently teaching myself German. I downloaded 'course' material from many different sites, and worked through the material (admittedly, there are short exercises with the material). In addition, I currently get regular emails and updates from other sites that help me improve my German everyday (and Ioad the audio as MP3 files onto my MP3 player, and then listen when travelling or doing boring stuff (like housework - ugh!).

But I also want a German qualification, something on paper. None of the courses that I have accessed have this. So, instead, when I think I'm ready, I contact an assessment centre that offers an internationally-recognised (or, in this case, at least EU-recognised) exam, I register for the exam, and take it. I didn't have to pay for the course (and I was also able to skip one level).

I judge by the mark I achieved in the exam how far I am, learn more from my own sources, and when I deem myself to be ready, I register for the next level exam. If I fail, no big deal - I just try again later.

Ken

Assessment or evaluation?

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:50:10 GMT

by Rita Kop.

During the Elluminate session on Wednesday the question was raised if evaluation is different than assessment. One of the responses in the chat window mentioned that there is a value judgement in evaluation that is missing in an assessment. What do you think?

What if we ran universities like wikipedia?

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:14:33 GMT

by Vahid Masrour.

Just found this piece: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/what-if-we-ran-universities-like-wikipedia/27612?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Since we're discussing alternatives to traditional formal education, i thought this could be relevant.

Am I the only one lost?

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:22:12 GMT

by Sheila slbacon.

I started this course to learn about the power of the Internet and social media tools to support me as a learner...and then apply that experience to work I am engaged in about 21st century literacy skills.

At first, I found the course very user-friendly...using Moodle and Elluminate Live were gentle experiences - with lots of repeated support. The Daily is a gentle reminder that there is an opportunity to engage and the links are provided to me again and again.

However, as I engaged in the process of reaching out to other participants, I became quite discouraged. When I responded to comments posted by fellow participants, the replies that I got back shut down dialogue rather than opened it up. I did not receive one response that made me want to reply to the same conversation again. I tried to enter into about 8 different conversation threads and always felt unwelcome.

My friend tells me I have to learn how to "feed the machine!" I am a newbie to most of these Internet tools and I am not even aware of what machine I should feed let alone how one would go about doing that!

The range of possible learning places is so broad that I am using a lot of time reading things that really don't have meaning for me. They are beyond my readiness. The randomness of searching for people with similar interests and sincere open-mindedness to engage in a process of collaborative exploration and learning about a topic is over-whelming.

SO I just gave up and have become what I think is known as a lurker!

I need much more explicit instruction and fewer choices to get me started. I am definitely a life-long learner and self-motivated. My lack of experience with the social media and collaborative tools is a huge obstacle to my success.

I will continue to lurk and eavesdrop on conversations...some of which are helping me to identify what I don't know...

But how do I learn what I want to about these tools as efficiently as possible. I just don't have the time to engage in random attempts to 1)locate people who can provide impetus to my learning and 2)use a variety of new and apparently useful Internet tools.

So that's my frustration rant! SHeila

Ideas from the suggested readings

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:34:03 GMT

by Sara Genone.

http://www.mindmeister.com/65367956/evaluating-learning-in-ple-ns

I posted this link to a map I have created with Mindmeister.
The map is public and everyone can modify it, to add nodes, links or comments...

Today I spent some time in reading suggested articles for this week/unit on Evaluating.

This map represents my thought about the possibility offered for evaluating in PLE/Ns enviroments and refers to the documents where I "took" the ideas

What about this sharing tentative... ?

Thanks for possible comments
Sara

Assessment in distributed environments - an early model?

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:08:54 GMT

by George Siemens.

Social media monitoring tools are generally not very helpful...but they may be part of a model that can be applied to assessment of learning in PLEs.

Basically, a social media monitoring tool helps organizations (and ego-centric people, none of who are in this course, I'm sure) track what is being said about their company or product online. Radian6 is an example. By monitoring blogs, facebook, twitter, tags, the "real time" web, these services can provide an overview of nature of comments (positive, negative), changes in trends, reactions to new products, customer engagement (they apparently have a pretty soft definition of engagement if you can measure it via twitter), etc.

There are serious problems with this model, but it is a start. Conceivably, as better analytics tools and methods are developed, educators could assess a learner through her work in her PLE/N. Of course, this sort of defeats the purpose of a PLE, but, if they are to be adopted in formal education, all roads converge on Assessment.

Thoughts? What can/could we assess with a social media monitoring approach? What couldn't we assess? And, for that matter, does assessment change what PLEs are for?

Evaluation by Metaphor

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:05:34 GMT

by Ken Anderson.

I see a pattern emerging here:

Anderson writes: Carola Conle et. al. write about vicarious experiences told through stories resonating with student teachers' previous experiences, causing an interaction between vicarious and previous, resulting in a modification of the previous.

Downes writes: A full understanding of the concept required more than the ability to manipulate certain formal rules. It required also the ability to apply these rules to experience, and this, Kuhn concluded, did not come automatically with the understanding of the rules. Complete comprehension includes the application of the tacit element in knowledge, the ability to "see" the way the rules relate to experience.

Zhang writes: Some good teachers use metaphors to help students to understand new things. These metaphors only helps when it connect the new with their previous knowledge.

Clancy writes: Keith mentioned, though, that he thought George uses Resonance to mean "pattern recognition," keeping with the theme of working in networks and not with singular items. In that sense, I would move it up Bloom's Taxonomy to the level of Synthesis/Creating.

What do you see?

Resonance and evaluation

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:38:29 GMT

by Ken Anderson.

What is this thing called resonance? I've seen it mentioned in a few posts here and there, but I don't have a good idea on what it means. Wikipedia talks about resonance as involving oscillation of a system, where the oscillation is of higher amplitude at certain frequencies than at others.

Should I be oscillating? Is this how resonance is being used here? Is resonance a form of evaluation? If I oscillate largely when reading something, does this mean it is good?

Evaluation by Recognition

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:42:26 GMT

by Stephen Downes.

In various presentations (such as this one http://www.downes.ca/presentation/242 see especially slide 35) I have stated two things about assessment:

1. Learning is recognized, not measured - although we have taken to using tests and such as proxies for recognition, ultimately, we are not confident in saying that a person has learned unless someone who is already qualified in the field has observed and attested that the learning has been achieved.

2. Recognition is global, not particular. The recognition that a person has learned a discipline is not the same as recognizing that a person has learned various components or competencies associated with the discipline. Thus, experts recognize performance in the discipline-wide community, rather than performance in specially designed tests and evaluations (such tests are used primarily to determine whether a person merits placement within the community and subsequent internship in order to facilitate this observation).

This account of assessment runs directly counter to two recent trends in assessment:
- testing, and especially standardized testing
- competencies

So, what do you think? Can we effectively assess learning without tests and competencies?