Searching for "assessment"
How to Craft Useful, Student-Centered Social Media Policies
By Tanner Higgin 
08/09/18
https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/08/09/how-to-craft-useful-student-centered-social-media-policies.aspx
Whether your school or district has officially adopted social media or not, conversations are happening in and around your school on everything from Facebook to Snapchat. Schools must reckon with this reality and commit to supporting thoughtful and critical social media use among students, teachers and administrators. If not, schools and classrooms risk everything from digital distraction to privacy violations.
Key Elements to Include in a Social Media Policy
- Create parent opt-out forms that specifically address social media use.Avoid blanket opt-outs that generalize all technology or obfuscate how specific social media platforms will be used. (See this example by the World Privacy Forum as a starting point.)
- Use these opt-out forms as a way to have more substantive conversations with parents about what you’re doing and why.
- Describe what platforms are being used, where, when and how.
- Avoid making the consequences of opt-out selections punitive (e.g., student participation in sports, theater, yearbook, etc.).
- Establish baseline guidelines for protecting and respecting student privacy.
- Prohibit the sharing of student faces.
- Restrict location sharing: Train teachers and students on how to turn off geolocation features/location services on devices as well as in specific apps.
- Minimize information shared in teacher’s social media profiles: Advise teachers to list only grade level and subject in their public profiles and not to include specific school or district information.
- Make social media use transparent to students: Have teachers explain their social media plan, and find out how students feel about it.
- Most important: As with any technology, attach social media use to clearly articulated goals for student learning. Emphasize in your guidelines that teachers should audit any potential use of social media in terms of student-centered pedagogy: (1) Does it forward student learning in a way impossible through other means? and (2) Is using social media in my best interests or in my students’?
Moving from Policy to Practice.
Social media policies, like policies in general, are meant to mitigate the risk and liability of institutions rather than guide and support sound pedagogy and student learning. They serve a valuable purpose, but not one that impacts classrooms. So how do we make these policies more relevant to classrooms?
First, it forces policy to get distilled into what impacts classroom instruction and administration. Second, social media changes monthly, and it’s much easier to update a faculty handbook than a policy document. Third, it allows you to align social media issues with other aspects of teaching (assessment, parent communication, etc.) versus separating it out in its own section.
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more on social media in education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media+education
more on social media policies in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media+policies
Bryan and Special Guest Nate Otto,
Director of the Badgr Platform at Concentric Sky
An interactive discussion on badges and micro-credentials
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Bryan Alexander, special guest Nate Otto, and the Future Trends Forum Community will discuss badges and micro-credentials at present, their future and the challenges they face. Nate is the Director of Open Badges Projects at Concentric Sky, where he leads development of the Badgr platform for issuing and managing verifiable digital credentials. Nate’s background in political sciences also informs his work on open standards with a focus on building and maintaining tech ecosystems resistant to monopolies.
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notes from the webinar
Nate Otto Concentration Sky @ottonomy https://badgr.com/
A Beginner’s Guide To Open Badges, https://elearningindustry.com/guide-to-open-badges-beginners
Mozilla discontinue and switch to Badgr platform. free accounts to Badgr. current integration of Mozilla backpack with other platforms such as Moddle will be preserved. Backpack solution, or issue badges.
Steve Taylor: Moodle is one of the platforms integrated with Backpack.
Xapi infrastructure. super messaging protocol https://xapi.com/ . Ryan Harrell question. Nate response, great fit for badging. Badgr Pathways https://badgr.com/en-us/badgr-pathway.html
Ryan Harrell
This is an extremely useful conversation. We’re working on building a dedicated micro-credentialing platform at our University specifically to provide continuing education material based on the material we are already creating in our various programs.
Open badges extensions for education test course. Two extensions: one describes assessment which goes to a particular badge. Second extension allows the issues to describe. Published extensions. Badgr implemented the assessment extensions: the Digital Promise project –
https://digitalpromise.org/.
hurdles to prevent adoption of badges: 1. still not easy enough to start issuing badges, design principles. get ambitious what to do with badges but no ability to start the assessment process. how badges will be awarded. starting small is the way, simple tools, google forms, to help decide what to do. 2. how do we understand the achievements of badges
Three Things Teachers Need to Spot—and Stop—Plagiarism
my note: I firmly disagree with the corporate push to mechanize plagiarism. Plagiarism is about teaching both faculty and students, and this industry, under the same cover is trying to make a profit by mechanizing, not teaching about plagiarism.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-10-08-three-things-teachers-need-to-spot-and-stop-plagiarism
According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, 58% of more than 70,000 students surveyed say they have plagiarized someone else’s ideas in their writing.
Plagiarism-detection software can address the most pressing needs of classroom educators faced with assessing students’ written work. Here’s how:
1. Teachers Need More Time
The Challenge: The larger the class is, and the more students that are in it, the longer it takes to review each written assignment—checking grammar, style, originality of ideas, etc. This is especially important when screening for plagiarism.
My note: this is NOT true. If the teacher is still lingering in the old habits of lecturing, this could be true. However, when a teacher gets into the habit of reviewing papers, s/he can detect as soon as in the first several paragraphs the discrepancies due to copy and paste of other work versus the student’s work.
In addition, if the teacher applies group work in her/his class, s/he can organize students to proofread each other’s work, thus teaching them actively about plagiarism, punctuation etc.
2. Evidence Must Be Reliable
The Challenge: When identifying plagiarism, teachers need to be confident in their assessment. Accusing students of academic dishonesty is a weighty claim; it can lead to their suspension or even expulsion from school.
My note: another myth perpetuated by industry searching for profit. Instead of looking at the process of plagiarism as punitive action, an educator will look at it as education and prevention. Prevention of plagiarism will never be successful, if the focus as in this article is on “suspension,” “expulsion,” etc. The goal of the teacher is NOT to catch the student, but to work with the student and understand the complexity of plagiarism.
3. Tools Must Be Easy to Use
My note: right, the goal is to make the teacher think as less as possible.
My note: PlagiarismCheck is the same as TurnitIn and all other tools, which seek profit, not education. Considering that plagiarism is a moving target (https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2016/01/10/plagiarism-or-collaboration/) and it is a concept first and secondly an action, the attempt to extract profits from the mechanization of this process is no less corrupt then the attempt to focus on profit (of education) rather then on education (itself)
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more on plagiarism in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=plagiarism
Secondary Traumatic Stress for Educators: Understanding and Mitigating the Effects
Roughly half of American school children have experienced at least some form of trauma — from neglect, to abuse, to violence. In response, educators often find themselves having to take on the role of counselors, supporting the emotional healing of their students, not just their academic growth.
The
symptoms are similar in some ways to post-traumatic stress disorder: withdrawing from friends and family; feeling unexplainably irritable or angry or numb; inability to focus; blaming others; feeling hopeless or isolated or guilty about not doing enough; struggling to concentrate; being unable to sleep; overeating or not eating enough; and continually and persistently worrying about students, when they’re at home and even in their sleep.
One of the handful of
studies of STS in schools found that more than 200 staff surveyed from across six schools reported very high levels of STS.
STS can affect teachers’ happiness, health and professional practice. But Betsy McAlister Groves, a clinical social worker and former faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, says that she has often been surprised by the number of teachers, school counselors and administrators who recognized the cumulative stressors that they faced in their schools but did not realize that their symptoms were a common reaction to working with traumatized children — and that these symptoms had a name.
How Schools Can Acknowledge Secondary Trauma:
Building a Culture of Awareness
Create Peer Groups
Trauma-Informed Schools: School leaders should take a school-wide approach. There is a growing movement around creating trauma-informed schools — schools that recognize and are prepared to support community members affected by trauma and traumatic stress. Such schools deeply integrate social-emotional learning into their teaching, culture and approach, understanding that the holistic health and wellbeing of their charges is essential for achieving academic success.
Resource for teachers and schools
- Assess how your work as an educator might be affecting you (both positively and negatively) by using the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) self-assessment tool and exploring the toolkit created by Teaching Tolerance to learn self-care strategies.
- Learn how, as an educator, you can begin to identify secondary traumatic stress and learn strategies for self care through the tip sheet created by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
- Explore the resources created by the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a collaboration between the Massachusetts Advocates for Children and the Harvard Law School.
- How strong are your school’s trauma-responsive programs and policies? Take the 20-minute evidence-informed Trauma Responsive Schools Implementation Assessment to find out — and learn ways to grow your school’s work.
- Learn about additional individual and organization strategies for addressing secondary traumatic stress, compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
- Stay tuned for a new online curriculum for preK–12 teachers, named STAT (Support for Teachers Affected by Trauma), being created by experts in the fields of secondary traumatic stress, education, and technology. The curriculum, due for a 2019 launch, will feature five modules on risk factors, the impact of STS, and self-assessment, among related topics.
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more on mindfulness in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mindful
Student Perceptions of Learning and Instructional Effectiveness in College Courses
https://www.ets.org/Media/Products/perceptions.pdf
Students’ Perception of Gamification in Learning and Education.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-47283-6_6
College students’ perceptions of pleasure in learning – Designing gameful gamification in education
investigate behavioral and psychological metrics that could affect learner perceptions of technology
today’s learners spend extensive time and effort posting and commenting in social media and playing video games
Creating pleasurable learning experiences for learners can improve learner engagement.
uses game-design elements in non-gaming environments with the purpose of motivating users to behave in a certain direction (Deterding et al., 2011)
How can we facilitate the gamefulness of gamification?
Most gamified activities include three basic parts: “goal-focused activity, reward mechanisms, and progress tracking” (Glover, 2013, p. 2000).
gamification works similarly to the instructional methods in education – clear learning and teaching objectives, meaningful learning activities, and assessment methods that are aligned with the objectives
the design of seven game elements:
- Storytelling: It provides the rules of the gamified activities. A good gamified activity should have a clear and simple storyboard to direct learners to achieve the goals. This game-design element works like the guidelines and directions of an instructional activity in class.
- Levels: A gamified activity usually consists of different levels for learners to advance through. At each level, learners will face different challenges. These levels and challenges can be viewed as the specific learning objectives/competencies for learners to accomplish.
- Points: Points pertain to the progress-tracking element because learners can gain points when they complete the quests.
- Leaderboard: This element provides a reward mechanism that shows which learners are leading in the gamified activities. This element is very controversial when gamification is used in educational contexts because some empirical evidence shows that a leaderboard is effective only for users who are aggressive and hardcore players (Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014).
- Badges: These serve as milestones to resemble the rewards that learners have achieved when they complete certain quests. This element works as the extrinsic motivation for learners (Kapp, 2012).
- Feedback: A well-designed gamification interface should provide learners with timely feedback in order to help them to stay on the right track.
- Progress: A progress-tracking bar should appear in the learner profile to remind learners of how many quests remain and how many quests they have completed.
Dominguez et al. (2013) suggested that gamification fosters high-order thinking, such as problem-solving skills, rather than factual knowledge. Critical thinking, which is commonly assessed in social science majors, is also a form of higher-order thinking.
Davis (1989) developed technology acceptance model (TAM) to help people understand how users perceive technologies. Pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PAD) emotional-state model that developed by Mehrabian (1995) is one of the fundamental design frameworks for scale development in understanding user perceptions of user-system interactions.
Van der Heijdedn (2004) asserted that pleasurable experiences encouraged users to use the system for a longer period of time
Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) has been integrated into the design of gamification and addressed the balance between learners’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Ryan and Deci (2000) concluded that extrinsic rewards might suppress learners’ intrinsic motivation. Exploiting the playfulness and gamefulness in gamification, therefore, becomes extremely important, as it would employ the most effective approaches to engage learners.
Sweetser and Wyeth (2005) developed GameFlow as an evaluation model to measure player enjoyment in games
Fu, Su, and Yu (2009) adapted this scale to EGameFlow in order to measure college students’ enjoyment of e-learning games. EGameFlow is a multidimensional scale that consists of self-evaluated emotions.
Eppmann, Bekk, and Klein (2018) developed gameful experience scale (GAMEX) to measure gameful experiences for gamification contexts. one of the limitations of GAMEX to be used in education is that its effects on learning outcome has not been studied
the Big Five Model, which has been proposed as trait theory by McCrae & Costa (1989) and is widely accepted in the field, to measure the linkages between the game mechanics in gamification and the influences of different personality traits.
Storytelling in the subscale of Preferences for Instruction emphasizes the rules of the gamified learning environments, such as the syllabus of the course, the rubrics for the assignments, and the directions for tasks. Storytelling in the subscale of Preferences for Instructors’ Teaching Style focuses on the ways in which instructors present the content. For example, instructors could use multimedia resources to present their instructional materials. Storytelling in the subscale of Preferences for Learning Effectiveness emphasizes scaffolding materials for the learners, such as providing background information for newly introduced topics.
The effective use of badges would include three main elements: signifier, completion logic, and rewards (Hamari & Eranti, 2011). A useful badge needs clear goal-setting and prompt feedback. Therefore, badges correlate closely with the design of storytelling (rules) and feedback, which are the key game design elements in the subscale of Preferences for Instruction.
Students can use Google to search on their laptops or tablets in class when instructors introduce new concepts. By reading the reviews and viewing the numbers of “thumbs-up” (agreements by other users), students are able to select the best answers. Today’s learners also “tweet” on social media to share educational videos and news with their classmates and instructors. Well-designed gamified learning environments could increase pleasure in learning by allowing students to use familiar computing experiences in learning environments.
It turns out, nobody really knows. The first study, a systematic review, summarizes the research to date on physician burnout. Study authors found that researchers do not use a consistent definition of burnout, and estimates of how common it is vary widely.
The second study followed doctors-in-training over six years and tracked how they felt about their work. They found that women and doctors in certain high-stress specialties were more likely to experience symptoms of burnout, like emotional exhaustion and regret about career choice.
Dr. Katherine Gold, coauthor of an editorial accompanying the JAMA studies. She says that the main questionnaire used to measure burnout wasn’t even designed for doctors. She says it’s intended for professionals like social workers and therapists, who have to cope with trauma their patients experience. My note: this is the merit of Kelsey Milne’s dissertation with SCSU EDAD program: how do we measure may be the key to the right assessment.
Burnout definition: How you define burnout is all over the map. Any time you have a diagnosis that might apply to 85 percent of the population, you wonder how useful that is. But burnout is much less stigmatized than depression. People are just more willing to say they’re burned out.People have resonated with the feeling that something isn’t right, and something is making our work really difficult. We’ve latched on to this as the word we’re going to use.
There’s talk about the solutions all being personal. The physician should be more resilient. The physician should do yoga. The physician should practice mindfulness. I think the stress that people are feeling is much more about external demands, like the electronic medical record and paperwork.
I know I feel frustrated when I get emails telling me that there’s lunchtime yoga, which of course I can’t make it to because I have too many patient charts to complete. My Note: this is part of Kelsey’s findings for educators also.
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more on meditation in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=meditation
The Overselling of Education Technology
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-03-16-the-overselling-of-education-technology
my response to ed tech is “It depends.”
Some people seem to be drawn to technology for its own sake—because it’s cool.
Other people, particularly politicians, defend technology on the grounds that it will keep our students “competitive in the global economy.”
But the rationale that I find most disturbing—despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it’s rarely made explicit—is the idea that technology will increase our efficiency…at teaching the same way that children have been taught for a very long time. Perhaps it hasn’t escaped your notice that ed tech is passionately embraced by very traditional schools: Their institutional pulse quickens over whatever is cutting-edge: instruction that’s blended, flipped, digitally personalized.
We can’t answer the question “Is tech useful in schools?” until we’ve grappled with a deeper question: “What kinds of learning should be taking place in those schools?”
Tarting up a lecture with a SmartBoard, loading a textbook on an iPad, looking up facts online, rehearsing skills with an “adaptive learning system,” writing answers to the teacher’s (or workbook’s) questions and uploading them to Google Docs—these are examples of how technology may make the process a bit more efficient or less dreary but does nothing to challenge the outdated pedagogy. To the contrary: These are shiny things that distract us from rethinking our approach to learning and reassure us that we’re already being innovative.
putting grades online (thereby increasing their salience and their damaging effects), using computers to administer tests and score essays, and setting up “embedded” assessment that’s marketed as “competency-based.” (If your instinct is to ask “What sort of competency? Isn’t that just warmed-over behaviorism?”
But as I argued not long ago, we shouldn’t confuse personalized learning with personal learning. The first involves adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores, and it requires the purchase of software. The second involves working with each student to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests, and it requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well.a recent review found that studies of tech-based personalized instruction “show mixed results ranging from modest impacts to no impact” – despite the fact that it’s remarkably expensive.
an article in Education Week, “a host of national and regional surveys suggest that teachers are far more likely to use tech to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning.”
OECD reportednegative outcomes when students spent a lot of time using computers, while Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) concluded that online charter schools were basically a disaster.
Larry Cuban, Sherry Turkle, Gary Stager, and Will Richardson.
Emily Talmage points out, uncannily aligned with the wish list of the Digital Learning Council, a group consisting largely of conservative advocacy groups and foundations, and corporations with a financial interest in promoting ed tech.
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more on educational technology in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=educational+technology
Here is the archived copy of the live session:
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round table digital literacy. Jeff Plaman Dept of Education
SIG MN Literacy council
elearning strategies, embedding into faculty curriculum digital literacy.
microcredentials dissertation for professional development. how about grading
definition: where does it start and where does it end. what should people know and able to do. credibility of sources,
digital skills is the how, digital literacy is the what where
eshel alkalai read her
how do we assess disparities in digital literacy.
assignment banks. conceptual framework, where does it fit.
K12 technology mini-sessions. people are scared of acronyms. culture change. immediate win.
not digital feed but digital stream.
Enhanced ebooks
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Rob Bylik Eros? for geo
open stacks, open textbooks library. loadstar, indesign
English 101 materials for discussion on digital literacy.
Jamie Heiman.
All materials on #DigitalLiteracy in the IMS blog here: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digital+literacy
Scenario for digital literacy in English classes:
What do virtual reality, BuzzFeed quizzes and essay writing have in common?
https://www.educationdive.com/news/what-do-virtual-reality-buzzfeed-quizzes-and-essay-writing-have-in-common/527868/
July 18, 2018
high school students now create infographics, BuzzFeed-like quizzes and even virtual reality (VR) experiences to illustrate how they can research, write and express their thoughts.
technology — using sites like CoSpaces Edu and content learning system Schoology (my note: the equivalnet of D2L at SCSU) — to engage and empower her students.
Thinklink, during a session called “Virtually Not an Essay: Technological Alternatives to a standard essay assignment.” (see this blog materials on ThingLink and like here: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=thinglink. The author made typo by calling the app “ThinKlink, instead of ThinGlink. Also, to use Thinglink’s Video 360 editor, the free account is not sufficient and the $125/month upgrade is needed. Not a good solution for education)
Jamie: I would love to discuss with you #infographics and #Thinglink for use in your courses and the Departmental course.
Digital literacy (DL): options, ideas, possibilities
Meaningful Grading: A Guide for Faculty in the Arts
Natasha Haugnes, Hoag Holmgren, and Martin Springborg
https://wvupressonline.com/node/759#2
Martin’s own LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/activity:6425014893287657472/
College and university faculty in the arts (visual, studio, language, music, design, and others) regularly grade and assess undergraduate student work but often with little guidance or support. As a result, many arts faculty, especially new faculty, adjunct faculty, and graduate student instructors, feel bewildered and must “reinvent the wheel” when grappling with the challenges and responsibilities of grading and assessing student work.
Meaningful Grading: A Guide for Faculty in the Arts enables faculty to create and implement effective assessment methodologies—research based and field tested—in traditional and online classrooms. In doing so, the book reveals how the daunting challenges of grading in the arts can be turned into opportunities for deeper student learning, increased student engagement, and an enlivened pedagogy.
