- Students assess their peers: Having students assess their peers using rating scales takes much of the responsibility for assessment of the educator. This is particularly effective in online learning communities as it is a means of developing a sense of community among the members. Understanding the need for collaboration and the benefits of sharing ideas, concerns, and misconceptions will ultimately ensure that learners are able to submit the most effective work samples and/or compositions.
- Students receive feedback from online communities: Participation in online communities can be assessed in a variety of ways. The most evident and important means of assessment is through feedback from learning community members. Direct feedback permits open communication among members, increasing collaboration, and ultimately creating a stronger sense of community and the development of relationships among community members.
- Educators assess based on student contributions: The facilitator/teacher can easily check the amount of participation and contribution by each member in online communities because changes and updates receive a timestamp and can even send email notifications.
Fair and valid assessment ensures all students are expected to reach the same program outcomes. Students enrolled in a collaborative learning community will not always possess the same level of skills and knowledge. As a facilitator/teacher of a distance learning program, it is important to consider factors of this nature prior to the beginning of a course. The instructor of distance learning classes will take on numerous roles. One of these many roles will include analyzing the participation of all members of a learning community. Palloff and Pratt (2007) suggest that the instructor act as a facilitator and cheerleader, motivating students to dig deeper and extend discussion topics. If a student does not want to participate in a learning community for an online course, the other members of the learning community should work to foster a stronger relationship. If after continuous attempts to engage the reluctant learner no change takes place, the instructor should take the lack of participation into consideration when assessing the student. A rubric is an excellent means of ensuring all students are graded according to the same standard and expectation in a clear and concise manner.
References:
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Assessment of collaborative learning. Baltimore: Author.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
I particularly like the idea of peer to peer assessments. We are now post-graduate students, so we've had a lot of academic experience and are even better able now to provide constructive criticism of each other's work from the vantage point of being a student ourselves. Beyond that, I think training primary and secondary students to critically assess the work of their peers is excellent preparation for doing the same in college and as future leaders and innovators in the workforce.
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