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LLL Erasmus program Multilateral Virtual Campuses
Teacher Virtual Campus: Research, Practice, Apply
502102-LLP-1-2009-1-LT-ERASMUS-EVC
Airina Volungeviciene
Vytautas Magnus University
EDUCA ONLINE, Berlin, December 2, 2010
Challenges of assessing learning outcomes in multicultural virtual
mobility sessions
TeaCamp project
aims is to increase VM among HE academic staff by:
- facilitating development, management and implementation of virtual research and mobility and
- improving their VM competences
TeaCamp meets academic staff VM needs by facilitating
a) HE institutions to realize necessary steps to be undertaken to ensure full academic virtual exchange and recognition of academic virtual processes
b) Academic staff to prepare, develop and implement VM, despite of their economic, social and other restraints
c) Researchers to implement transnational comparative research on VM
d) Institutions and students to benefit from updated and qualitative curriculum, to ensure availability and accessibility of qualitative curriculum for various LLL target groups
Assessment in international study module “Virtual learning in HE”
The module developed and studies organized by 12 teachers from:
1. Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania, coordinating institution)
2. Innovation Centre of University of Oviedo (Spain)
3. Jyvaskyla University (Finland)
4. Jagellonian University (Poland)
5. University of Aveiro (Portugal)
6. Baltic Education Technology Institute (Lithuania, enterprise)
Sub-module Culture models (1/2)
(JYU, FI)
Collaborative online learning (CC1N, ES)
Information literacy
(JU, PL)
Learning technologies
(BETI, LT)
Learning strategies
(VDU, LT)
Assessment strategies
(UA, PT)
Culture models (2/2)
(JYU, FI)
Assignment 1 2 2 2 2 2 1
Portfolio Moodle portfolio as a required part for international, intercultural collaborative group work artifact collection, for individual experience record for culture model sub-module and for grade transfer from multi-institutional to single institutional context
Weight 8,33 16,66 16,66 16,66 16,66 16,66 8,33
Challenge 1. Agreement and consistency in learning outcomes
All curriculum designing partners (6 institutions) reached the agreement on the following learning outcomes:
1. apply the knowledge of culture models to solve problems caused by cultural difference in virtual mobility (Culture modules)
2. Apply the knowledge of culture models to solve problems caused by cultural differences in virtual mobility (Culture modules)
3. explain the skills needed to facilitate and manage collaborative online learning (Collaborative online learning)
4. describe different technological resources for collaborative online learning (Collaborative online learning)
5. analyze and evaluate information (Information literacy)
6. synthesize and create information (Information literacy)
All curriculum designing partners (6 institutions) reached the agreement on the following learning outcomes:
7. define the technologies and standards used in distance education (Learning technologies)
8. apply learning management systems based on these standards (Learning technologies)
9. compare learning styles and learning strategies (Learning strategies)
10. identify and apply online resources in order to implement learning strategies virtually (Learning strategies)
11. design assessment strategies for virtual learning (Assessment strategies)
12. use tools to support scenarios of virtual learning (Assessment strategies)
Challenge 1. Agreement and consistency in learning outcomes
Challenge 2. Learning recognition and certification
• Students are issued a certificate which lists all learning outcomes achieved by the student
• All teachers from all institutions sign the certificate
• All student achievements are recognized within partner institutions (in the framework of study curriculum or competence recognition)
Challenge 3. Measuring learning achievements
Assessment strategy is based on:
• formative evaluation of collaborative international group work results (10 activities)
• summative assessment is calculated on the basis of artefacts, small project – based activity outputs (completed/ not completed, 8,33 % each) and individual Moodle portfolio tool (imported assignments with individual)
• Formative evaluation using portfolio tool is used for “Culture models” sub-module 2 assignments – individual student presentations prepared on the basis of student experienced collected during the whole module
• Metacognitive assessment using an online questionnaire for pre, per and post testing
Problems encountered:
• Failure to agree upon summative evaluation criteria for each activity and performance indicator description. Possible reasons are:
1. very different experience among teachers, institutions
2. very short period of time for curriculum designing focusing mainly on virtual mobility organization and teaching practice
3. lack of plugin in Moodle for assessment strategy designing (vs Blackboard)
Challenge 4. Recognising learning outcomes to institutional contexts
• Moodle networking service is implemented to access TeaCamp international Moodle from single – institutional Moodle platforms
• Students use portfolio tool to import their collaborative group work results and later to export them to their institutional Moodle portfolios
• Comparative Erasmus assessment tables are used for grade calculation and for recognition of TeaCamp module learning outcome at individual institutions, e.g.:
Lithuanian grade
Evaluation ECTS grade
10 Excellent: outstanding performance with only minor mistakes
A
9 Very good: above the average standards, but with some errors
B
8 Good: generally sound work with number of notable errors
C
7-6 Satisfactory: fair but with significant shortcomings D
5* Sufficient: performance meet the minimum criteria E
4 Very weak: Considerable further work is required F/FX3 Unsatisfactory F/FX2 Bad F/FX1 Unfair behavior or failure to appear for evaluation F/FX
Barriers to overcome
• There are no national initiatives to recognise virtual mobility and its outcomes!
• International departments at HEI keep to traditional Erasmus mobility due to lack of practices and regulations on the national level
• Recognition of learning outcomes is implemented only on the basis of good-willingness of the teachers and study departments – there are no regulations in all partner institutions to automatically recognise learning outcomes on the basis of certification
• there are no inter-institutional agreements for virtual mobility (only for traditional mobility), which triggers application of this practice in broader scope
• there is no official recognition of such study module in all participating institutions (teachers and study departments recognise learning outcome – based achievements, no additional skills or competences are certified nor accredited) and no such international study modules for free access
Barriers to overcome
• traditional assessment methods are used for examination (usually paper – based examination as a proof of record) for final evaluation of a module (sometimes weighting up to 50 % of the final grade!) bringing huge barriers to recognise and assess collaborative online learning outcomes
• motivation to change assessment strategies is on personal level only. However, it is very complicated to create “the rules of the game” for virtual mobility – personal and cultural differences require a lot of diplomacy, flexibility and patience, as well as skills and time
• ICT management skills are quite low among the majority of teachers – this causes time constraints, lack of self-confidence and lack or low quality feedback
• students are much more active in networking and peer-support and peer-review than teachers
What we’ve learnt
Recognition of international collaborative online learning results will stay complicated (or will be experimented but not realized) until:
• institutions prepare, agree and recognise virtual mobility and online learning as a part of formal study process and academic exchange (for both, students and teachers)
• traditional assessment methods are changed with the evidence, as well as inter-institution negotiation based new criteria – based assessment
• the teacher and the student are trained and free to choose the type of performance during learning process, and are safe in terms of performance recognition during the assessment
