Assessment for eLearning - Week 7

My final project was up early in the week, so I have had the pleasure of receiving feedback from a number of peers. Everyone has made great suggestions, from my images to my objectives. I'm working to take those suggestions and work with my gut instinct to make improvements to the final project.

Completing this project helped me to see that carefully designing your learning objectives before creating the assignments and assessments will really help to drive learning. I've heard it all before, but that was the first time I have really tried to drive the activities and assessments by the objectives.

One of my focuses with this module was to create a more student centered, constructivist module. Prior to the redesign, students read a "lecture" I wrote about information source types, then answered very low level quiz questions on information source types, then went out and found examples. The new approach gives students a number of resources, and asks them to research one information source type, then create a presentation for their peers. By the end of the module, students will have viewed all presentations, created a concept map, complete a quiz (which now focuses on higher order thinking skills) and engaged in a discussion where they determine and defend the appropriate information source type to consult.

This was quite an undertaking, but by far the most difficult part for me was creating the concept map over, and over, and over, and over. I guess I am not that good at transferring what's in my head onto a concept map for others to understand!

"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another."

-John Dewey

There couldn't be a quote more fitting as I moved on to reviewing the products of my peers. I've enjoyed seeing what my peers have produced, if for no other reason than to give me more ideas of activities I can do with my students. Buffy and Maureen have designed projects that are very much like what I have my students do at the conclusion of the course, with the exception that my students must somehow connect their project to history, and they are allowed to present their information as a research paper or a historical fiction piece (short story or short movie). Kelly Anne's project looks at a piece of historical fiction through the lens of capturing the author's voice. This will also help me as I work with students through the creation of their final pieces. I will definitely be reliant on it to redesign some of the reading activities my students do.

My Final Project

Can be found here