Commented on Kayle Gaviola and Elizabeth Hurley’s Mod. 3 Blogs
In this module, you watched two video programs in which George Siemens discussed strategies for assessing collaborative learning communities in the online environment, and for creating and maintaining successful online learning communities. Both instructors and learners must take responsibility for achieving this goal. Occasionally, you may run across a student who does not like to work in groups or collaborate with peers. He or she may even request to work on a project alone rather than in a cooperative group.
As an instructor, there are several issues to consider:
· How should participation in a collaborative learning community be assessed? How do the varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course affect the instructor's "fair and equitable assessment" of learning?
· If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, what should the other members of the learning community do?
· What role should the instructor play? What impact would this have on his or her assessment plan?
According to Swan (2004) ongoing assessments of student performance is an important factor which supports learning in online environments. Palloff and Pratt (2005) suggested that assessments must be embedded in the design of an online course and in order to assess oneself or peers working collaboratively within a group, rubrics should be used. Siemens also proposed that different models could be used in collaborative environments, where students assess their peers, students receive feedback from online communities, educators assess student contribution, and educators assess metrics from learning management systems (Laureate, 2008a). Overall, research has proven that participation in a collaborative learning community should be assessed.
I would hope that an instructor would uphold high and equitable standards with all learners whether proficiently or ineptly skilled, in any type of learning environment. I believe that an instructor who possess those standards are highly effective. According to Anderson (2008) it is the instructor’s responsibility to help the learner development competency skills online, facilitate learning opportunities when learners make mistakes, provide learners with prior practice and sufficient technical support, and allow students to self-evaluate their skills in order to face, develop, and correct inadequate skills. Siemens suggested that assessments should be fair and direct, based on stated outcomes, and equitable (Laureate, 2008a). Basically in order for an instructor to be asses fairly and equitably, they should have a more flexible and multidimensional outlook on assessment of collaborative learning.
It’s been my experience, when other students within an online collaborative learning community is disengaged from participating, you have to find ways to engage them to join. Everyone plays an important role in a group in order to make things happen, and it is all about making sure that everyone knows and are comfortable in the roles they play in that group. Overall, the whole idea of a learning community is to work as a group and not as an individual.
Siemens suggested that the instructor use a change assessment model to get students to participate in a learning community, have student’s role play and participate in a high-functioning learning community which offer them an opportunity to learn collaboratively, and design the learning experiences by creating a mix of individual and community-based environments (Laureate, 2008b). In order for learning networks to successfully work collaboratively, there needs to be a high level of trust within the group, well connected information sources, and external connections (Laureate, 2008b). Basically, to be effective in collaborative learning communities, all members must have an awareness of their roles and share the same common goal.
References:
Anderson, T. (Ed.). (2008). The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed.). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008a). Principles of distance education: Assessment of collaborative learning. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008b). Principles of distance education: Learning communities. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Swan, K. (2004). Relationships between interactions and learning in online environments. The Sloan Consortium.