Participation in a collaborative learning community can be assessed by requiring a minimum amount of participation by the learner. A rubric can be designed to cover collaboration. Assessment can be designed to cover not necessarily what the student covers so long as it is appropriate for the discussion, but how well supported their subject matter. All students bring a varying amount of knowledge with them to every course. A level of pre-required knowledge can be stated for a course. This may help.
If a student does not want to participate in the learning community, there are several things that can be tried. Team building exercises can be of value for some members of the learning community. Seimens (2008) states that an excellent activity can be a role-playing task, which is done at the start of a class. Other students may be reluctant due to a lack of experience with a working team. An online format may be less intimidating for students because by its nature, it builds in more time to think. Other members of the learning community may be active participants. This may urge on the reluctant student to participate. Other methods of collaboration such as blogs or wikis, can also help a student take part in a collaborative exercise. The instructor can prepare a rubric that requires participation as a substantial part of the student’s grade. This would automatically make it part of the assessment plan.
References
Siemens, G. (2008) Learning Communities featuring George Siemens, Transcript of video, Laureate Education, Inc. (2008)
In refreshing my reading of chapter 1 of Collaborating Online (Palloff & Pratt, 2005), they reflected on the work of Johnson and Johnson (2000) and referred to how a team perceives their connection to each other, referring to it as ‘all swimming together, or all sinking together,’ (p.115 of Johnson & Johnson). Aside from setting up the rubric to require that level of group commit, I wondered if there might be concrete examples of how to set the stage for this type of commitment to one’s learning community. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteReferences
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ms. Eder - You wrote a very nice concise response to the questions for Module 3. I agree with all you wrote and really your first paragraph is what I too believe and it seems to be the format that Walden uses. J.M. Haefner poses a great question: "setting the stage"
ReplyDeleteI think our 8005 foundations course helped to set that stage. I think some sort of DE Foundations course should be required before any DE program begins to "set the stage" and it:
1. Has the students go through the exercise of posting at certain times (or goes through the exercise of whatever the rubric time requirements are).
2. Does it in a non-threatening environment.
3. Asks thought-provoking questions but not based on research or readings as to make this get-in-the-habit exercise easy to do.
4. Allows students to see that it is ok to have their own perspective and not be fearful of offering an out-of-the box thought.
Koh