RE: [xmca] Authentic Assessment

["valerie A. Wilkinson" <vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>]

Hi. I want to "stick an oar" (to help paddle?) in here before the topic
wafts quickly by.  I teach "Organizational Communication:  Management" at
university level -- designed to be a "practicum" with very little credit
(talk of written assignments runs them off).  We manage a Faculty event
(student run) concurrently.  The point is the event cannot be managed from
within the framework of a class for credit YET many students don't come to
learn how to manage but want to have fun.  Boiling this down to a small
lump, we tell them on Day One what is necessary to pass the course:
attendance and handing in some attempt at a final report.  Participation is
not required or evaluated.  So group work, though necessary, happens, but
evaluation shows up in written assignments.  To get the higher grades
(better than pass) they have to write an essay style test, evaluate
themselves (personal mastery), describe their management task, their efforts
to build a team, describe the total management situation of the "event" from
the perspective of their particular major -- governance, IT management, and
Computer Science, etc.  The ones who really want to be managers catch on --
and care about it, which shows up in the written assignments.  The ones who
don't invest get just the single credit with PASS.  I think this works but
getting them to see the difference between a "class for credit" and really
doing it is a bit of a trick. If we succeed, it is its own reward, of
course.  The students collaborate in training and learn from each other and
see a bigger picture.  If we don't, we add a handful of unreflective
gratification seekers to the job pool.

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 12:04 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
Subject: [xmca] Fwd: [Air-L] what should an introductory course cover in
"Internet Communication"?

I do not usually pass along mail between lists, but sometimes the overlaps
seem particularly
provoking. I have not listened to the lecture. My sensors go up at the words
"Authentic Assessment"
followed by  "assessment-driven focus". In light of our discussions here
about conditions that promote
learning and development as a two-way multi-party affair, wouldn't be
interesting to see how Mr. Allen's
play out in the design of online *learning*.?  .... no mention of
instruction except that it is assessment driven.

Hmmmm, how do you do that?
mike



Hi,

You may want to listen to this lecture by Matthew Allen at OII

"Authentic Assessment in the era of Social Media: ideas and applications
from Internet Communications"

"Matthew Allen will briefly review why an assessment-driven focus on online
learning is important, and how authenticity might be developed in a world of
social media, before presenting several examples of current and proposed
assessment practice in an undergraduate Internet Communications course."

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/?id=344

Cheers,
Julian

*** Please note that I am changing my email address. You can now reach me
using reach@julianhopkins.net ***
++++++++++
Blog: www.julianhopkins.net
Twitter: @julianhopkins
Skype: julhop

------------------------------

Message: 10
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:37:31 -0400
From: Tery G <teryg93@gmail.com>
To: Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: [Air-L] what should an introductory course cover in such a
       fast-changing field?
Message-ID:
 
<AANLkTimEdzCXXs+6SUn+wJY_0or+_ykJhFqqULyNMqGE@mail.gmail.com<AANLkTimEdzCXX
s%2B6SUn%2BwJY_0or%2B_ykJhFqqULyNMqGE@mail.gmail.com>
>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi all,

I asked a while back about acceptable resources for one of my classes. I've
heard offline from a few people who are currently designing courses similar
to mine, and who asked what I covered. We thought that might be an
interesting question to ask on this list.

Background on my course: I teach in a Media Arts department and the class is
called Digital Media Literacy. I designed it years ago, and I could not find
a single model for it, so it would be especially interesting for me to hear
now what people do or would do in this type of course.

The course is designed to introduce our freshmen to both the concepts and
some of the tools we use to create digital media (so it's a 100-level
course). Some of the class is spent on tools, currently Audacity for sound,
Photoshop for images, Quicktime for video, and Keynote for presentations. I
introduce them to at least three browsers, so they stop thinking IE *is* the
web. There are a handful of other utilities that we use: file transfer
programs, SnapZPro, etc. We do a quick history of the internet and of the
web (including the internet gift economy, though it barely exists anymore).
We cover file compression, types of compression, and when and why they need
to compress files.

The more I read about search engines, the more I want them to understand
about these tools that they use to gather the information they use to live
their lives, let alone write their papers. So, we cover search engines in
general, and Google in particular. Then we use the library databases. I'm
still following the controversy about whether and how PowerPoint affects the
way we think, so we read and talk about that. We look at copyright issues
and Creative Commons licensing. We look at net neutrality. I'm probably
forgetting something; I don't have my syllabus in front of me right now.

I've been staying away from things that seem trendy to me, and that I have
not been able to see academic value to, like Twitter and Second Life. I
included each once, but didn't get enough out of it and you can't include
everything . . .

Their final project is a multimedia presentation on a topic of their choice,
as long as it's related to digital media or media arts. They critique each
other's presentations as they build them, so this is a sneaky way of working
in more material while also giving them more practice with the tools we've
covered all semester.

So the question from me, and some others on the list, is -- if you were
designing this type of course, what would you put in?

Best,
Tery Griffin

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