Assessment for eLearning - Week 1

One thing that struck me this week was that you need to make sure your topics and discussions do not leave anyone feeling left out. The Ice Breaker activity was to choose a movie that held a special place for you, describe the movie, then describe your connection with it. As someone who is not a movie watcher, this prompt left me frustrated and worried that I was going to start out the course very poorly. Although I did ask, and was granted permission to change the prompt to a book, I still felt very left out of the conversations of others. I am normally the student who comments on at least 50% of my classmates opening posts because I feel some sort of connection, and love making those connection. Although I had heard of some of the movies, the number I had watched was really low. What this left me with was the understanding that not everyone fits into a little box, and that as an instructor, I need to be careful to make sure that I don't leave anyone behind. Being flexible, as my instructor was, will help me make sure that I include everyone in my activities.


I was intrigued to read about the 6 purposes of assessment this week, and to share our ideas about the opening activities on the discussion boards. Debora and Buffy helped me see the connection between surveys and metacognition. Prior to this, I wasn't really certain how they helped other than as a way to gather feedback and data. I greatly appreciated the connections they helped me make, and I will be brainstorming ways to use this metacognition type of assessment in my courses.


Wikis used to be something I was very much a supporter of, but I have since moved my love to Google Docs, which allows for the same type of learning/assessment activity, but also allows for simultaneous edits. I think that the ability for students to work together to create a community learning tool is important, and at first was frustrated when my new LMS did not have a wiki feature. Once I made the connection that I could do the same with a Google Doc, I actually found it to be a superior way of creating group documents. So the outcome is the same, but the means to the end is different.