Searching for "assessment"
Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with ‘topics’ as country reforms its education system
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-schools-subjects-are-out-and-topics-are-in-as-country-reforms-its-education-system-10123911.html
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/
Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take “cafeteria services” lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills.
The reforms reflect growing calls in the UK – not least from the Confederation of British Industry and Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt – for education to promote character, resilience and communication skills, rather than just pushing children through “exam factories”. (http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/20/labour-calls-time-on-exam-factory-approach-to-schooling)
(My Note/Question: so UK is ready to scrap what US pushes even harder with the STEM idea?)
More on education in Finland and its education in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=finland
Based on the literature regarding games, gaming, gamification, game-based learning, and serious games, several clear trends emerge:
- Gaming and gamification in the sense of game-based learning is about using games and game-like tactics in the education process, for greater engagement and better learning outcomes. However, this is only the first level of such initiative. The second and higher level is about involving students in the game-building and gamification of the learning process (as per Vygotsky’s Zone of…) thus achieving student-centered and experiential learning.
- When hosting games and gaming in any library, “in-person” or electronic/online games are welcome but not sufficient to fulfill their promise, especially in an academic library. Per (1), an academic library has the responsibility to involve students and guide them in learning how to engage in the building process required in true game-based learning.
- Game-based learning, gaming and gamification in particular, in educational (academic library) settings must consider mobile devices and the BYOD movement in particular as intrinsic parts of the entire process. Approaching the initiative primarily by acquiring online “in-person” games, or game consoles has the same limited educational potential as only hosting games, rather than elevating the students to full guided engagement with game-based learning. If public relations and raised profile are the main goals for the academic library, such an approach is justified. If the academic library seeks to maximize the value of game-based learning, then the library must consider: a. gaming consoles, b. mobile devices as part of a BYOD initiative and c. cloud-based / social games, such as MineCraft, SimCity etc.
- Design for game-based learning, gaming and gamification in educational (academic library) settings must include multiple forms of assessment and reward, e.g. badges, leaderboards and/or certificates as an intrinsic part of the entire process. Merely hosting games in the academic library cannot guarantee true game-based learning. The academic library, as the forefront of a game-based learning initiative on campus, must work with faculty on understanding and fine tuning badges and similar new forms of assessment and reward, as they effectively implement large scale game-based learning, focused on the students’ learning gains.
Recommendations for LRS
- In regard to LRS, the gaming and gamification process must be organized and led by faculty, including housing and distributing the hardware, software and applications, when needed.
- The attached paper and the respective conclusions summarized in four points demand educational and experiential background, which is above the limits of the LRS staff. In addition, the LRS staff has clearly admitted that the pedagogical value of gaming and gamification is beyond their interest. This recommendation is not contradicting to the fact and opportunity for LRS staff to participate in the process and contribute to the process; it just negates the possibility of staff mandating and leading the process, since it will keep the gaming and gamification process on a very rudimentary level.
- The process must be further led by faculty with a terminal degree in education (Ph.D.) and experience in the educational field, since, as proved by the attached paper and 4 point conclusion, the goal is not a public-library type of hosting activities, but rather involving students in a pedagogically-sound creative process, with the respective opportunity for assessment and future collaboration with instructors across campus. This recommendation is not contradicting the fact and opportunity for LRS library faculty to participate actively in the process and contribute to the process. It just safeguards from restricting the process to the realm of “public-library” type of hosting activities, but failing to elevate them to the needs of an academic campus and connecting with instructors across campus.
- This conclusions adhere to and are derived from the document recommended by the LRS dean, discussed and accepted by LRS faculty in 2013 about new trends and directions in academic libraries, namely diversification of LRS faculty; breaking from the traditional library mold of including faculty from different disciplines with different opinions and ideas.
Digital Portfolios: Facilitating Authentic Learning and Cultivating Student Ownership
presented on Tuesday, March 3, 2015.
Steve Zimmerman (charter school director), New York
digital porfolio software: open source. Google Sites – free, but too laborious for teachers
must be student owned and intuitive interface (you cannot say this about MN eFolio)
assessment rubrics
easy sharing and feedback
accessible form mobile devices (you cannot say this about MN eFolio)
easy integration with other applications (you cannot say this about MN eFolio)
Tina Holland
she is not a test person. good for her.
writing, critical thinking, creative thinking, soft skills (communication, collaboration, negotiation). team players, problme solvers, prioritize,
education is moving from traditional teaching methods, to inquiry based. self-directed learning. from summative to formative assessment
21st century learning competencies
#DigitalPortfolio
the presentation is now available on-demand at: http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=936737&s=1&k=93DDFD3EB35B18A080B8EB13DD8FA770.
More on digital portfolio in this blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=digital+portfolio
please have two great articles on the use of social media in the library:
1. Experts as facilitators for the implementation of social media in the library
Vanwynsberghe, H.., Boudry, E.., Verdegem, P.., & Vanderlinde, R.. (2014). Experts as facilitators for the implementation of social media in the library? A social network approach. Library Hi Tech, 32(3), 529-545. doi:10.1108/LHT-02-2014-0015
Excellent article. Apparently, they do things differently in Belgium.
“Social media literacy” (SML) can be defined as not only the practical
and critically cognitive competencies possessed by users of social media, but also the
motivation to employ these media effectively and appropriately for social interaction
and communication on the web (Vanwynsberghe and Verdegem, 2013).
Repeated by me numerous times, but ignored consistently.
p. 530 Therefore, the aim of this study is to empirically assess how a social media expert, or the employee with the most knowledge and skills concerning social media, in the library facilitates, or impedes, the information flow and implementation of social media in the library.
p. 541 The findings suggest that such social media experts play a significant role in either supporting or constraining the information flow and implementation of social media.
5.2 A social media expert plays an important role in the library for spreading
information about social media Unsurprisingly, social media experts are the most central actors for giving social media information; they share more social media information with other librarians and rarely receive information in return. Any information they do receive mostly comes from a person skilled in social media use. The social media expert as the central actor in the information network has the power to facilitate or prevent information exchange about social media (Scott and Carrington, 2012).
this is, if the experts are ALLOWED to participate. What if the social media access is usurped by very few others?
even worse, what if the social media is decentralized across?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2.
Woodsworth, A., & Penniman, W. D. (2015). Current Issues in Libraries, Information Science and Related Fields. Emerald Group Publishing.
Mon, L. and Phillips, A. (2015) ‘The social library in the virtual branch: Serving adults and teens in social spaces’, in Current Issues in Libraries, Information Science and Related Fields. Emerald, pp. 241–268.
The Social Library in the Virtual Branch
p. 256 Lorri Mon and Abigail Phillips. Measuring and Assessing the Results of Social Media Activities
public libraries
at the moment the success is assessed and quantified according the activity by the library and the users.
beyond the activities of viewing, friending, liking, following, commenting, mentioning, and sharing and re-sharing, an important question is: How has this social media activity contributed to furthering the library’s mission, goal, and objectives?
p. 257 Assessing the impact, influence and reach of the library’s social media requires more effort than simply counting followers, friends and likes; e.g. assessing friends or followers as a percentage of the library’s services area.
Planning an impact assessment might involve measuring traffic to the physical library or to specific library web pages before and after FB or Twitter posting, or measuring usage of particular resources before and after a social media promotion.
The underlying assumption of an education system that relies so heavily on test-based assessment is that content is what matters.
For those who prioritize learning that can be measured using only quantitative assessments, game-based learning probably just looks like a way to increase student engagement and content retention. It might seem like a complex workbook, or an entertaining quiz. Perhaps game-based learning looks like a great tool for practice and drilling, like a super sophisticated flash-card system that makes memorization more fun. But this kind of thinking doesn’t take into account the broader understanding of what matters. Game-based learning is a great classroom tool because it allows for interdisciplinary learning through contextualized critical thinking and problem solving.
Games in the classroom can encourage students to understand subject matter in context — as part of a system. In contrast to memorization, drilling, and quizzing, which is often criticized because it focuses on facts in isolation, games force players to interact with problems in ways that take relationships into account. The content becomes useful insofar as it plays a part in a larger multi-modal system.
Definition
Game-based learning is an instructional method that allows students to experience, understand, and solve problems in the world of a particular subject, or system, from the inside.
One promise of game-based learning is that it has the potential of building comprehension and literacy rather than retention. It does this by combining instruction, practice, and assessment. Teachers become the facilitators of a process where instruction is experiential. Practice is project based, requiring students to solve new problems and address new challenges using the new ideas to which they’ve been introduced. And assessment no longer measures a student’s ability to regurgitate information, or to choose among multiple answers, but rather, to use the content, or subject matter, in context. Even more impressive is that in order to successfully manipulate one piece within a comprehensive and complex system, the students must understand every piece of the system.
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/games/
http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/MindShift-GuidetoDigitalGamesandLearning.pdf
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/11/the-mindshift-guide-to-digital-games-and-learning
ey ideas in game-based learning, pedagogy, implementation, and assessment. This guide makes sense of the available research and provides suggestions for practical use.
http://www.instituteofplay.org/
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/access/white-paper-social-media.pdf
#tfsocialmedia
Social media objectives:
- promotion
- collection management tool
- Outreach
- teaching and learning
Opportunities and challenges
- opportunity to build a sense of community between the library and its users
- the variability of skills across library staff for using social media effectively, striking the right tone between professional and personal, coordinating activities across the institution to avoid duplication
- maintaining visibility for the library brand and copyright issues relating to hosting library resources on social media sites
Policies and management:
- Librarians are divided on the benefits of introducing formalized social media policies and plans. About a third of libraries responding to the Taylor & Francis survey had a policy in place, but over 40% had no plans to introduce one
- Some believe that representing the library as a professional function with a
consistent tone is the priority, while others believe that a more human approach is important, with individual staff free to bring their own ideas and personalities to social media activities.
Effectiveness and assessment:
- difficult to prove return on effort and that the time required to do this was a major barrier to more comprehensive analysis of impact
- framework for evaluation, so it is likely that assessment against commonly agreed metrics will become an increasingly important part of social media activity within the library in the near future
Current Social Media Practices:
- In a study from the mid 2000s (Cantrell and Havens1 ), most library directors in the US when questioned about social media said they did not think that libraries had a role in social networking
- A more recent study from 2012 (Kai-Wah Chu and Du4) shows how use of social media by the library has now become mainstream. In this survey of libraries in Asia, North America and Europe, 71% were found to be using social media tools with a further 13% saying they planned to use them
Advantages of using social media
n Financially the costs of using social media are perceived to be low;
n It requires little training;
n It promotes library services and disseminates news quickly, delivering this information more directly to library users;
n It increases engagement and interactions with library users;
n It helps gather feedback to enhance user services;
n The promotion of library holdings via social media can help increase usage of content;
n It enhances communication both within the library and with other departments;
n It can be used for outreach activities through onward sharing, well beyond the institution itself, helping build connections and reputation more broadly
Social Media Objectives: graph on page 8 of the PDF document:
A To promote events
B To promote library services
C To promote resources/collections at the library
D To update on library refurbishments
E To promote new acquisitions
F To promote library guides, exhibition guides
G To connect with new students joining the university
H To engage with the academic community
I To connect with the wider community beyond the university e.g. the town in which the institution is based
J To connect with distance learners
K As a customer services tool- complaints, suggestions, enquiries, feedback
L To highlight subject specific information
M To connect with potential students
N As a teaching tool to promote information literacy, technology and writing tips (not library based)
O To promote courses
P As a research tool to locate official documents and studies
From UK-based focus group: “The library is a programme, not just a building.”
Channel preferences: Graph on page 10 of the PDF document
SOCIAL MEDIA USES Table on p 13 of the PDF document
Twitter n Distribute library news and information
n Provide customer service
n Build connections with researchers
n Build connections with other librarians and institutions
Facebook n Distribute library news and information
n More social and less formal than Twitter – share photographs and run competitions
n Arrange events including tracking RSVPs and sending event updates
n Engagement with students
Pinterest n Promote general library collections, digital and archive special collections and information literacy
n Set up of online repositories for students to pin researched references as part of
collaborative group work
n Display book titles to save time browsing and promote new titles
n Provide an arena for students and course leaders to pin reviewed and recommended reading
for a particular topic
n Develop communities with other online libraries
YouTube n Streaming film collections
n Instructional ‘how to’ videos teaching information literacy skills and how to use library
services and resources
There are also a number of other social media products that are being used by librarians that reflect regional
preferences and the need for the specific functions offered by niche applications.
Collection usage and discovery: Graph on p. 15
Teaching and learning
From US-based librarian interview: “The trend in education now is to create environments that foster collaborative learning. Faculty have ditched textbooks and course management systems in exchange for a Facebook page for their class, or a wiki, or a blog. These online environments are fun; students already know how to use them and are more motivated to comment, discuss and share in these environments than a dry CMS.”
Social media policies and management, p. 18
73% of respondents stating that they believed more roles dedicated to social media would appear in the library in the future.
Effectiveness of social media
From UK focus group: “We keep track of something particularly successful, then we redo the campaign 6 months later.”
From US focus group: “We have very few interactions with anyone on our Twitter feed.”
“Twitter is definitely the best platform, because we hashtag all of our posts with the keyword
of the publication, and so for the academic audience, once they click it’s going to pull up all
of the similar publications under that topic.
Promoting library social media channels
From UK focus group:
“We retweet each other to encourage new followers.” My note: Suggested by me regarding SCSU_Library for Twitter and Pinterest and SCSUTechinstruct but “considered” (in local lingo, slow death of the idea)
http://www.futured.com/documents/FuturEdePortfolioforAssessmentWhitePaper.pdf
http://www.myefolio.com/
http://chalkandwire.com/index.php/product
A Survey of the Electronic Portfolio Market Sector: Analysis and Surprising Trends
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/10/12/a-survey-of-the-electronic-portfolio-market-sector.aspx
FolioTek, Columbia, Missouri, ePortfolio launch in 2001. Sells in U.S. with interest in expanding globally.
Livetext, LaGrange, IL, founded in 1998. New product: Field Experience Module. Smart phone app: iPad, iPhone, Android. Mostly U.S., but expanding in South America and the Middle East. Easy tie-in to accreditation agencies and their standards. Individual accounts. New release start of 2012. Started in K-12, moved focus to higher education, now exploring K-12 once again, starting with teacher education.
RCampus, produced by Reazon Systems, Santa Ana, CA. Software development started in 1999,
Desire2Learn, Kitchener, Ontario also Baltimore, MD, with offices around the world, founded in 1999. Sells worldwide, latest release for the electronic portfolio (ver. 3.5) was in August 2011. Electronic portfolio and the D2L LMS are bundled; each leverages functionalities from the other. ePortfolio moving to hosting service and individual accounts soon.
Digication, Providence, RI and Palo Alto, CA, founded 2002. Is in partnership with Google Apps. Individual accounts; institution keeps assessment data; individual keeps ePortfolio functionality. Through Google Apps: free digital accounts with Digication (no assessment management functions with these accounts). “Three or four clicks and Digication is enabled.” Almost daily updates. Smart phone app: IOS and Android. Contact jyan@digication.com.
Learning Objects, producers of Campus Pack, in Washington, DC, with employees around the world, founded in 2003.
TaskStream, New York City, organized 1998, founded 2000, markets internationally, versions available in a variety of languages. Offers separate platforms, AMS (Accountability Management System) and LAT (Learning Achievement Tools); each is multi-component.
Longsight, based in Ohio with offices in NY, IN, OH, WI, and CA, founded in 1978, a service provider for open source solutions. Supports both the Open Source Portfolio (OSP) and Sakai, within which OSP is embedded.
Chalk & Wire, Ridgeway, Ontario, Canada;
NobleHour, produced by TreeTop Software, in Lakeland, FL, founded in 2011
Sherston, Tag Developments, the assessment division of Sherston Software, Ltd., providers of Red Pen Tool: http://www.maps-ict.com/redpentool.mov, of LiveAssess: http://www.maps-ict.com/liveassess.mov, and of MAPS 3: http://www.maps-ict.com/maps3.mov.
PebblePad from PebbleLearning, in Telford, UK, with office in Australia, founded in 2003. Most popular ePortfolio in the U.K. and Australia,
Symplicity, in Arlington, VA, offers an electronic portfolio (http://www.symplicity.com/reflection) but it is only one among dozens of products that Symplicity offers–all of them are management tools for higher education (see http://www.symplicity.com/products). Good example of separating products to support a single function.
Blackboard
eFolioWorld, technology from Avenet, the Minnesota Colleges and Universities portfolio system,
iWebFolio, from Nuventive. Also known for TracDat, marketed since the 1990s, Nuventive founded 2000.
Epsilen,
Mahara,
eLumen,
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/assets/documents/pdp/survey_of_epdp_and_eportfolio_practice_in_uk_higher_education.pdf
p. 10 and p. 18 offer questionnaires for assessment
http://ncepr.org/finalreports/WSUfinalreport.pdf
p. 3 questionnaire p. 5
From: lrs_l-bounces@lists.stcloudstate.edu [mailto:lrs_l-bounces@lists.stcloudstate.edu] On Behalf Of Ewing, M Keith
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 11:15 AM
To: lrs_l@stcloudstate.edu
Subject: [LRS_l] Important copyright ruling
Last Friday the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling in Cambridge University Press et al., v. Patton (an appeal of the Georgia State Case which had been adjudicated in 2012 by the District Court in Atlanta). Nancy Sims (UMinnesota) has written an interesting and thorough summary and assessment of the ruling and its importance. See http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/2014/10/11th-circuit-gsu-ruling.html. The ruling itself (all 129 pages) can be found at http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201214676.pdf.
keith
Keith Ewing
Professor, Library Systems & Digital Projects
Previous IMS entries regrading copyright:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=copyright
http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx
eCourse outline
Part 1: Introduction and Engagement—Getting Users through the Door
- A brief overview of how library instruction has developed for more than 100 years
- A brief review of how library instructions is evolving to meet users’ changing needs
- Identifying what must be learned and how we can encourage effective learning (needs assessment)
Part 2: Preparing for Delivery—Thinking from a User-Centric Point of View
- A brief overview of instructional design techniques
- Thinking about the audience and how to create learning opportunities that stick
- The importance of preparation
Part 3: Delivering Learning for Positive Results—Providing Learning that Lasts
- Creating learning environments that facilitate success
- Keeping learners awake and engaged
- Encouraging learning through facilitation of discussion and exploration
- Setting learners up for success
Part 4: The End is The Beginning: Libraries as Onsite-Online Social Learning Centers
- What to do when formal learning ends and learners leave the learning face-to-face or online learning space
- Providing a place where learners can succeed
- Evaluating for success
- Returning to the beginning with new and improved learning opportunities