For the Blog
• How should participation in a collaborative learning community be assessed? How do the varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course affect the instructor's "fair and equitable assessment" of learning?
• If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, what should the other members of the learning community do? What role should the instructor play? What impact would this have on his or her assessment plan?
A participation in a collaborative learning community should not be assessed by quantity, but quality. The varying levels of skill and knowledge that students bring to a course should be regarded by the instructor’s “fair and equitable assessment” of learning by the quality of the student’s communication with his/her fellow classmates and the in-depth online conversations taking place in and among the various classmates.
However, if the student does not wish to participate or network in a learning community, then the student may be directed to a f2f classroom by the instructor. As for the other members of the learning community, there might be a way to persuade and encourage a reluctant classmate through help in navigation (if the problem is in technological experience) and perhaps a partnership with one or others that could encourage the classmate in the use of technology. Sometimes blogging and/or wiki’s can be very daunting, despite the “ease” of use purported by the website. Communication with this classmate is a very necessary part of winning over the technological challenge of the course.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteGood information, but can you explain how can an instructor measure quality communication to a student that is reluctant to participate due to the lack of knowledge of the technology or if he just are one of those students that likes the online environment, but don’t want to work in groups?