Could Rubric-Based Grading Be the Assessment of the Future?
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/10/14/could-rubric-based-grading-be-the-assessment-of-the-future/
I use rubrics and see the positive sides as well as appreciate the structure they bring in assessment. But this article makes me see also the danger of rubrics being applied as a harness, another debacle no different from NCLB and testings scores, which plague this nation’s education in the last two decades. The same “standardizing” as in Quality Matter, which can bring some clarity and structure, but also can stifle any creativity, which steers “out of the norm.” A walk on such path opens the door to another educational assembly line, where adjunct and hourly for-hire instructors will teach pre-done content and assess with the rubrics in a fast-food manner.
a consortium of 59 universities and community colleges in nine states is working to develop a rubric-based assessment system that would allow them to measure these crucial skills within ongoing coursework that students produce.
written communication, critical thinking and quantitative literacy. The faculty worked together to write rubrics (called Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education or VALUE rubrics) that laid out what a progression of these skills looks like.
“These rubrics are designed to be cross-disciplinary,” explained Bonnie Orcutt
Parents and teachers are pushing back against blunt assessment instruments like standardized tests, and are looking for a way to hold schools accountable that doesn’t mean taking time away from class work.
Gamification: Practical Strategies for Your Course
http://www.academicimpressions.com/webcast/gamification-practical-strategies-your-course-december-2015
What Gamification Is:
Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.
What Gamification is not:
Gamification is not digital game-based learning (DGBL); it does not allow students to play digital games to apply/identify concepts, nor does it allow students to create games to demonstrate comprehension. Unlike DGBL, gamification does not require the use of virtual environments or elaborate tech-based systems.
Engage students through creative course design.
Learn how to strategically implement game-based design principles that can help you better engage students in a more interactive approach to education. Using gamification in your courses does not have to be difficult nor does it have to be comprehensive. We will discuss a range of different approaches that you can implement immediately to help make assignments more competitive, grading scales more interactive, and content more compelling.
more on gamification in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=gamification&submit=Search
From: Zac Feit [mailto:zac@myschoolflow.com]
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2015 11:50 AM
To: Miltenoff, Plamen <pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu>
Subject: Hope to hear back
Plamen,
My name is Zachary Feit, and I am with Via Response. Awhile back we had spoken about our student response platform and you had expressed interest in taking a look at a better time. I was emailing to see if this was still something of interest.
Via Response provides a cloud-based student response platform that enables students to use any mobile devices instead of legacy clickers to interact with instructors during classes (including students participating from remote locations). Because we are cloud-based, Via Response is much easier to use for faculty because all questions, assessments, grade books and student data for all sections are stored in a single location that they can access from any browser. Via’s architecture also eliminates the FERPA compliance issues that are common with clicker devices that store student/grade data files on instructor computers or thumb drives.
I would be delighted to give you a 15 minute demo that goes over our system and its benefits to both teachers and student.
You can either email me back or call me at the number provided below. Thanks in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Zachary Feit
Regional Account Director
Via Response (http://www.viaresponse.com)
407-477-4491
Information literacy Across the curriculum…and in your classroom
http://www.slideserve.com/jacqui/information-literacy-across-the-curriculum-and-in-your-classroom
Assignment Ideas
- Compare a scholarly and a popular information source. Evaluate them in terms of authorship, audience, purpose, etc.
- Compare different kinds of scholarly sources (e.g., print vs. online journals, journals with varying models for peer review).
- Explore online communities and discussion forums related to a specific issue or discipline.
- Explore Wikipedia. Debate pros and cons of “crowdsourcing” and collective editing.
- Have students create a class wiki on a given research topic.
more on information literacy in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=information+literacy&submit=Search
Journal Publishers Rethink a Research Mainstay: Peer Review
http://chronicle.com/article/Journal-Publishers-Rethink-a/233715/
Over the past few years, they have sought to repair, replace, or revolutionize the practice of peer review. Their methods vary. Some propose radical transparency. Some seek to decouple review from journals. Some propose crediting scientists for their review work. And some propose doing away with the system.
Much of this work was highlighted last month, when a small group of publishers held the first Peer Review Week, via online media, to promote the benefits of and debate changes in the existing system.
“All in all, it seems pretty dreadful,” says Andrew R.H. Preston, a physicist who helped start Publons, one of several services seeking to give researchers scientific credit for their reviews.
Started two years ago, Publons has prompted controversy. It allows referees to upload reviews, without journal approval, that could prove embarrassing to authors. It has raised ethical questions that researchers have only begun to ponder, including basic things, like just who owns peer review, anyway?
Mr. Stell is one of the founders of PubPeer, a website that allows anyone to anonymously comment on a published research article. The site has become known for its role in exposing several scientific frauds in the past few years.
Center for Digital Education (CDE)
real-time impact on curriculum structure, instruction delivery and student learning, permitting change and improvement. It can also provide insight into important trends that affect present and future resource needs.
Big Data: Traditionally described as high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information.
Learning or Data Analytics: The measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs.
Educational Data Mining: The techniques, tools and research designed for automatically extracting meaning from large repositories of data generated by or related to people’s learning activities in educational settings.
Predictive Analytics: Algorithms that help analysts predict behavior or events based on data.
Predictive Modeling: The process of creating, testing and validating a model to best predict the probability of an outcome.
Data analytics, or the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data, is driving decisionmaking in many institutions. However, because of the unique nature of each district’s or college’s data needs, many are building their own solutions.
For example, in 2014 the nonprofit company inBloom, Inc., backed by $100 million from the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, closed its doors amid controversy regarding its plan to store, clean and aggregate a range of student information for states and districts and then make the data available to district-approved third parties to develop tools and dashboards so the data could be used by classroom educators.22
Tips for Student Data Privacy
Know the Laws and Regulations
There are many regulations on the books intended to protect student privacy and safety: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
— as well as state, district and community laws. Because technology changes so rapidly, it is unlikely laws and regulations will keep pace with new data protection needs. Establish a committee to ascertain your institution’s level of understanding of and compliance with these laws, along with additional safeguard measures.
Make a Checklist Your institution’s privacy policies should cover security, user safety, communications, social media, access, identification rules, and intrusion detection and prevention.
Include Experts
To nail down compliance and stave off liability issues, consider tapping those who protect privacy for a living, such as your school attorney, IT professionals and security assessment vendors. Let them review your campus or district technologies as well as devices brought to campus by students, staff and instructors. Finally, a review of your privacy and security policies, terms of use and contract language is a good idea.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Students, staff, faculty and parents all need to know their rights and responsibilities regarding data privacy. Convey your technology plans, policies and requirements and then assess and re-communicate those throughout each year.
“Anything-as-a-Service” or “X-as-a-Service” solutions can help K-12 and higher education institutions cope with big data by offering storage, analytics capabilities and more. These include:
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): Providers offer cloud-based storage, similar to a campus storage area network (SAN)
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Opens up application platforms — as opposed to the applications themselves — so others can build their own applications
using underlying operating systems, data models and databases; pre-built application components and interfaces
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): The hosting of applications in the cloud
• Big-Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS): Mix all the above together, upscale the amount of data involved by an enormous amount and you’ve got BDaaS
Suggestions:
Use accurate data correctly
Define goals and develop metrics
Eliminate silos, integrate data
Remember, intelligence is the goal
Maintain a robust, supportive enterprise infrastructure.
Prioritize student privacy
Develop bullet-proof data governance guidelines
Create a culture of collaboration and sharing, not compliance.
more on big data in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=big+data&submit=Search
Register for Wednesday’s Free AAEEBL Webinar with Darren Cambridge, one of the most influential members of the eportfolio field; 1 pm US EDT. The URL for the webinar will be displayed on your screen right after you complete registration. You do not need a password to login at that URL. Topic: “ePortfolio is a Genre.” Helen Chen and Trent Batson will moderate.
more on on eportfolio in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=eportfolio&submit=Search
Response: Personalized Learning Is ‘a Partnership With Students’
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/09/response_personalized_learning_is_a_learning_partnership_with_students.html
building relationships with students so I can better connect lessons to their interests, hopes and dreams; providing them with many opportunities for organizational and cognitive choice; and creating situations where they can get positive, as well as critical, feedback in a supportive way from me, their classmates and themselves.
Response: Personalized Learning Is ‘Based On Relationships, Not Algorithms’
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/09/response_personalized_learning_is_based_on_relationships_not_algorithms.html
Too often, the notion of “personalized learning” means choice-based programmed rather than truly personalized. This comes from the tech world, where “personalization” is synonymous with user choice. It’s the idea of giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down on Pandora. It’s the idea of having adaptive programs that change based upon one’s personal preferences. It’s the Facebook algorithm that tells you what information is the most relevant to you. It’s about content delivery rather than user creation.
While tech companies promise personalization, they often promote independent, isolated learning. True personalization is interdependent rather than isolated. True personalization is based upon a horizontal relationship rather than a top-down customization. True personalization is based upon a deeply human relationship rather than a program or an algorithm or a set of scripts. True personalization is a mix between personal autonomy and group belonging. It’s a mix between what someone wants and what someone needs. It’s a chance to make, rather than simply a chance to consume.