Six faculty gathered in the CTL on November 5th to participate in a discussion led by Chris L. on Assessment. The session was interactive and informative. Here are some notes that Chris distributed to the attendees:
1. I talked about ways I’ve tried to use the discussion forum feature to create role playing and other “active learning” assessments. My attempt at having students keep a running blog in the Conspiracy Theory course has not been so successful though:
— Alyssa pointed out that the rubric / guidelines for the blog are not as detailed as the ones for my discussion forums.
— Diane suggested that a way to increase participation in that type of assignment might be to form the class into teams, which would then compete to see which team could produce the largest quantity and quality of blog entries.
— Because the blog did not work out so well, I want to require some discussion forums in on-campus courses, but have been worried about doing so. There was a consensus that it is okay to do that – that students really now should expect to have to do some assignments online.
2. Peer Evaluation – Diane and Ellen both have or are working on ways to do this.
3. Create a Newspaper – Heidi brought samples of an assignment in which she has developmental writing students create a newspaper which is designed to help their classmates get to know them (for the purpose of facilitating more interaction in class down the line). It occurred to me that this would be a more enjoyable way for me to have online students introduce themselves (rather than just the “Hi, I’m so-and-so, I want to major in…)
4. We discussed various types of rubrics and their pros and cons.
5. Radio Programs – Ellen is considering a new assignment in which students will create a radio program, then broadcast it from a real radio station (such as the under-utilized station at Taconic). The group suggested that this could be an excellent service-learning project.
