First Post for Collaborative Communities in E-Learning

I have enjoyed the start of Collaborative Communities. This week has mainly been about reflecting on my hybrid Politics and Law class in the fall and recalling how to operate in D2L.  A lively and thoughtful group of classmates filled the discussion boards, an especially good sign in a class on collaboration.  Unlike the coming weeks, this week was more about sharpening existing skills then developing new ones.

I'm looking forward to participating more through the coming weeks.  This week was rushed form me with P/T conferences, a daughter's 2nd birthday, and family from out of town.  Even so, I have already picked a few useful tips and links from people.  My greatest point of frustration in teaching online in the fall was getting students to complete tasks.  Classmate Monica's suggestion that I create more screen cast videos orienting students to the Moodle site and its functions seems appropriate.

Final Reflection for Assessment in E-Learning

I just finished UW Stout's survey for Assessment in E-Learning with the comment that the course "exceeded my expectations."  The course not only deepened my understanding of e-learning it also stimulated my reflection on assessment in my f2f history classes.  Additionally, I began to develop proficiencies with additional e-learning tools.

Although my AP Euro students were not enthusiastic about their first wiki essays, I think this collaborative format has promise.  I have also enjoyed blogging here and plan to incorporate blogs into any online or blended class that I teach. I found creating an intro survey easy and intuitive and also plan to incorporate it into e-teaching.  Finally, I am intrigued by the possibilities of eyejot, WebEx, and Adobe Presenter, and would look into them more if I were teaching fully online.

Final Project

I happy with how my final project came out.  I'm fortunate that I have been able to combine work for this course with both my f2f Global Studies class, where I tested the first three activities, and with a professional development work group that I am leading on uncovering history.  This group just started, but inspired by my e-learning course work I have incorporated a blog. 

This has all provided another opportunity to reflect on how e-learning's potential for constructivist learning makes it natural for authentic history instruction.  Students learning history online can do the work of historians by constructing their own knowledge from primary sources.  This is equally possible f2f, but the change in formats seems to make it seem more possible online.

Survey Monkey

I created my first online survey last week.  I found Survey Monkey to be fairly intuitive, but could not visualize what all of the question types would look like.  Looking forward to checking some classmates' surveys to see some more question types.

A survey like this seems like a very good idea in both online and f2f classes. I do some paper and pencil surveying in my high school history classes, but creating an online survey encouraged me to expand what I ask.  The possibility of having the data quickly tabulated opens up the possibilities for the instrument.

Week 6: Preparing the final project

This week I received the unwelcome news that there was insufficient student registration to create an online Global Studies class for next year in my school district.  Despite this I am still glad to be working on a potential Global Studies class for my final project.  Thinking through objectives and outcomes is clarifying, and I should be able to incorporate some of the ideas into my f2f class.

I am also fortunate to have existing Essential Learner Outcomes (ELOs) for this class.  The Global Studies PLC at Anoka HS, of which I am a member has developed them, and I will be using them for my final project.  The complete list, which is continually evolving, is here.  The learning module on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution which is the focus of my final project presents work toward three of these outcomes.  The mind that I created in Inspiration links these outcomes with module activities and objectives.  Check it out.  Feedback is appreciated.

Taxonomy Table for Toussaint Louverture Activities

This week in my f2f Global Studies class I piloted activities in which students uncovered information about Haitian Revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture.  I was also pleasantly surprised at how much work I was able to cross apply to this project and to Assessment in E-Learning.  When I began the Assessment class I envisioned applying a lot of the class work to my AP European History class, because I already use Moodle occasionally for that class. But, since I am using my exploration of e-learning as a tool in developing curriculum that "uncovers" history, there is opportunity to apply concepts to all of my classes.

Developing a roster of assessment activities linked to Bloom's taxonomy did encourage me to deepen the activities, and for the taxonomy I created a final activity, composing a letter to our textbook publisher, that I did not do in class.  While doing the activities in class allowed the activity to develop more quickly, I can see advantages to doing the lessons online.  For instance, by having students construct their profiles of Toussaint through a wiki page, the facilitator will be able to track what each student contributed.  In class I had too many students watching other students work; and, the next time that I do this I will need to create individual roles and/or have students complete self-reports on their contributions.  Also, I think that the extended wait time of a forum discussion would bring more student voices into discussion of the primary sources.  A significant advantage, since this is the heart of the activity.

A very productive week of curriculum development.

Toolboxes

I enjoyed reviewing the toolboxes created by my classmates in their cozy groups.  I can imagine using several of these tools in an online high school Global Studies class, the focus of which is modern world history.

Survey Monkey or Zoomerang: I have frequently taken, but never created an online survey.  I am curious about how these tools compare.  I can imagine using these tools to get to know students, similar to how Datta Kaur began our assessment class.  This would allow me to gauge students responsiveness early in the class as well, because I have some concerns about how high school students will handle the responsibilities of fully online learning.

Similarly, I see eyejot as a tool to introduce the course and assess students technical savviness and responsibility.  Many secondary students will enjoy seeing and hearing their teacher and classmates.  This could also be used for oral presentations, but I would be much more likely to use WebEx, which the district employs, to assess student content understanding.  As noted in my group's toolbox, WebEx could be an excellent tool for assessing the depth and complexity of student content learning.  I like the idea of student presentations that allow immediate interaction and feedback with me and with classmates.  Students could create these presentations using Adobe Presenter, which would allow them to serve as learning artifacts and allow for other students to use the presentations as a resource.  I can also see myself using presenter to deliver information to students asynchronously.

My own experiences with this blog corroborate Shawn and Barbara's notes of Blogger's weaknesses.  I am not having as much luck linking this with my google sites e-portfolio and I am clearly seeing how this fundamentally another net for bringing people into the Google boat.  I am, however, enthusiastic about the use of student blogging as a formative assessment tool, and, at this point, would probably investigate Edublogs.

Thanks to all of the cozy groups for providing these toolboxes!

Global Studies Online?

In the past couple of weeks the possibility of my teaching a fully online class through my current high school has emerged.  The school year my district has offered a limited number of fully online courses, and they will be offering many more next year.  If student registration numbers are sufficient to offer these classes, new online teachers will need to create the classes from the ground up.  I have put my hat in the ring to develop European or US History or Global Studies.

With this exciting possibility in mind I have decided to focus on a possible online Global Studies class taught to 11th graders as I reflect on Assessment in E-Learning.  If the class doesn't exist or I am not selected to teach it, I hope to use the ideas that I form to enrich my f2f Global Studies class.  I am not currently using an web 2.0 tools in this course, although  I do have a static website that I use to communicate information to students and families.

Inspiration!

One of the best aspects of the UW Stout program so far has been the opportunity to play with new technologies.  After downloading Inspiration last week for the concept map assignment, I have found myself spending many of the past 24 hours using it to forge a clearer understanding of the Haitian Revolution, 1792-1804.  The events were complex, and I am hoping that clarifying my understanding will allow me to create clear learning targets for my Global Studies students next weekend.  Inspiration will also allow me to create an artifact of my own learning that I can share with Global Studies colleagues who, like me, are looking to incorporate more coverage of Latin America into their courses.

In the course of looking into this I also came across the Louverture Project, a fabulous wiki that houses many useful primary sources.  I have already participated in the project by editing it (for clarity, not content), and I bookmarked it with a Diigo account, in which I have created a group for social studies teachers.  A veritable stew of tools used in the E-Learning program!

Wiki Essay: Week 3, Assessment in E-Learning

My AP European History students worked on their collaborative essays on the course wiki this week.  Essays were due on Friday. I have been pleased with the process thus far, but do have some things to iron out.

Positives:

I offered students feedback on Thursday night in the comment box.  Most groups had some significant work done by then, and I later read students about incorporating the feedback into the final product.  My suggestions were one sentence long.  I think this made the essays truly formative assessments, because participating students were able to act on my assessment.  I do this with in-class essays, too, by reading student work at their request during essay tests, but this allowed me to see everyone's work.

I also liked that the students were able to see how other students pre-wrote.  In most groups one or more students did some pre-writing by organizing details or analysis into labeled lists before actual writing began.  In the other groups one student put out a thesis first and then essay emerged from that.  Slowing down the essay writing process allowed students to see or practice a pre-writing technique.

Issues:

Several students either did not participate in the essay construction or only participated once.  This issue would probably be greater outside of the AP pool of students.  Other participating students did see the essay as an assignment more than a process and left work late to complete, minimizing the amount of time for feedback.

The other issue was student over use of outside resources.  The essays prompts require analysis supported by specific historical examples.  All prompts were taken from previous AP tests. Here is a sample topic, the choice of one student group:  European women’s lives changed in the course of the nineteenth century politically, economically, and socially.  Identify and explain the reasons for these changes.  The analytic task is for students to identify the overall factors that were promoting changes in women's lives, for example industrialization and the growth of the middle-class.  Outside sources should allow students to then provide more specific examples as evidence.  In practice many student groups loaded up on examples, often to the detriment of analytic categories, while others actually lacked examples, in part because they were replicated analysis from the book.

Adjustment for next time:
 
I think that one adjustment will address several of the issues: breaking the assignment into chunks.  If I were to award class points for participating in the pre-writing this would deepen this benefit, allow me to offer in-course corrections twice, and help me to identify and pressure students who are not participating.  I will definitely do this again with this modification.