Waycottand thompsonascilite2010 slideshare

Transforming assessment in higher education: A participatory approach to the development of a

good practice framework for assessing student learning through social web technologies

Jenny Waycott, Kathleen Gray & Celia Thompson,

The University of Melbourne

Judithe Sheard & Rosemary Clerehan, Monash University

Joan Richardson & Margaret Hamilton, RMIT University

Outline of presentation

• The project – what, who

• Issues in the literature

• Project aims and phases:

1. Documenting Web 2.0 assessment practices2. Identifying principles of good practice 3. Field-testing guidelines / improving practice4. Producing and sharing resources

2

About the project

ALTC-funded priorities project:

Web 2.0 authoring tools in higher education learning and teaching: new directions for

assessment and academic integrity.

Project team

Jenny Waycott (project manager), Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne.

Celia Thompson, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne.

Margaret Hamilton, School of Computer Science and IT, RMIT University.

Joan Richardson, School of Business Information Technology, RMIT University.

Kathleen Gray (project leader), Faculty of Medicine / Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne.

Rosemary Clerehan, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University.

Judithe Sheard, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University.

Web 2.0 for learning, teaching & assessment in higher education?

O’Reilly & Battelle

(2009, p. 2)

O’Reilly, T., & Battelle, J. (2009). Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On. Special Report for the Web 2.0 Summit, 20-22 October , San Francisco CA. http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/28/web2009_websquared-whitepaper.pdf

“One of the fundamental ideas underlying Web 2.0 [is] that successful network applications are systems for harnessing collective intelligence ... a large group of people can create a collective work whose value far exceeds that provided by any of the individual participants”

http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/28/web2009_websquared-whitepaper.pdf





Kakutani

(2010,

paras 13-14)

Kakutani, M. (2010, 17 March). Texts without context. [Book review]. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html?ref=books

“jump to the summary, the video clip, the sound bite — never mind if context and nuance are lost in the process; never mind if it’s our emotions, more than our sense of reason, that are engaged; never mind if statements haven’t been properly vetted and sourced”

“tweet and text one another during plays and movies, forming judgments before seeing the arc of the entire work”

“power-search for nuggets of information that might support their theses, saving them the time of wading through stacks of material that might prove marginal but that might have also prompted them to reconsider or refine their original thinking”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html?ref=books





• Social web activities can be substantially different from assessment tasks students and lecturers are used to.

• Much has been written about pedagogical affordances of social web technologies.

• What about assessment?

Project aims

Participatory approach to supporting good practice in assessment of students’ social web (Web 2.0) activities:

1. Documenting how academics are assessing students’ Web 2.0 activities: Survey and interview teaching academics (September 2009)

2. Identifying principles of good practice Advisory group and national roundtable (November 2009)

3. Field-testing guidelines / improving practice 17 case studies in learning and teaching settings (February to June

2010)

4. Producing and sharing resources Watch this space...

Project aims





2010)


1. Documenting Web 2.0 assessment practices

• Online survey:

– 64 Australian academics who have assessed students’ Web 2.0 activities

• Follow up interviews with 22 respondents

– further exploration of issues around Web 2.0 assessment.

Documenting Web 2.0 assessment practices

Field of Study Number of respondents

Humanities / Society & Culture16

Education15

Information Technology11

Medicine & Health9

Management & Commerce6

Other3


Type of Web 2.0 activity Number of responses

Wiki writing 32

Blogging/microblogging 31

Social networking 17

Audio/video podcasting 16

Virtual world activities 12

Social bookmarking 11


Number of students

enrolled in subject

Number of responses

Less than 50 21

50-100 10

101-200 9

More than 200 7

69% undergraduate and 31% postgraduate subjects


How much the assignment is

worth

Number of responses

01-10% 7

11-20% 11

21-30% 9

31-40% 6

41-50% 9

51-60% 2

61-70% 0

71-80% 3

81-90% 2

91-100% 4


Intended learning outcomes Number of

responses

Generic or graduate skills or attributes 35

Specialised knowledge or skills required in a

discipline or profession29

Foundation knowledge or skills preparatory to

a discipline or profession28

What staff have said about Web 2.0 and assessment ...

Open publishing

It’s not unusual for the musician or his manager or someone to make a comment on the blog and to correct misinformation or thank them for an opinion or whatever and I think that is a really important lesson for [students] to learn that whatever they write they’re writing for an audience and if they’re writing for more than an audience of one that has implications


Informal writing / communication styles

it’s not a formal writing exercise, the idea is to let them express their thoughts, reflections, interests in the different topics rather than focusing on good grammar and formal sentence structure, which I think tends to constrain a lot of essays.


Personal identity and experience

There a process that goes into them finding their different voices, how to share appropriately, how to write with authority. A lot of them say ‘but I’m just a student’.


Co-authoring content

Students found it challenging to co-create content and collaborate with other students

How do you mark assignments when students can change/overwrite each other’s work! Many students who contributed early found that their work was completely lost. How do you manage this process of overwriting and still contributing to the same content?


Designing, managing, marking, reviewing the assignment

[There is a lot of] work involved in setting it up and making sure all the students know how to do it. If you ask them to write an essay they just go off and write it, you don’t have to spend the first three weeks of the course teaching them about essays

What staff have said about Web 2.0 and assessment...


I found the bottom third of the class had difficulty thinking about what to post on when it was left completely up to them. ... This time around I’ll try giving them a specific topic each week that they can discuss



The assessor is not assessing a written document, they’re assessing a page which ... is a whole labyrinth of choices and connections, so they’ve got to actually work their way through


Protecting students

I tell the students over and over again, that it is on the WWW, it’s not associated with the university, be careful what you put up there, make sure you are comfortable with this.


Protecting students

I certainly do what I can to protect [students]. I wouldn’t publish critical comments on their blogs, I don’t let other students know which ones I think are good, bad or indifferent. ... I protect their privacy to that extent.

Project aims





2010)


2. Identifying principles of good practice

• International advisory group: 30 members

• National roundtable:

– participants included academics from diverse disciplines, educational developers, and students.

– Discussions aimed to gather recommendations for good practice guidelines

• Proceedings available at: http://web2assessmentroundtable.pbworks.com

http://web2assessmentroundtable.pbworks.com/

What would good practice look like? Affordances

Affordances checklist ...

What is an appropriate fit between what assessment is trying to achieve and what Web 2.0 can do?

• Open publishing

• Communication styles and texts

• Personal identity and experience

• Co-creation, collaboration, crowd-sourcing

• Content management

What would good practice look like? Processes

Processes checklist ...

How do teachers use Web 2.0 to support student, self- and organisational learning throughout the cycle of activities involved in the assignment?

Design

Implement

MarkFeedback

Review

What would good practice look like? Policies

Policies checklist ...

How can assessment using Web 2.0 be made safe and fair for students and staff?

• disability

• access to IT services or equipment

• appropriate conduct

• identity and privacy

• academic honesty and integrity

• special consideration

• moral rights and copyright

Project aims





2010)


3. Field-testing guidelines / improving practice

17 case studies:

Draft guidelines pilot-tested

in 17 subjects

at 5 universities

in Victoria

during Semester 1, 2010

BloggingCinema Studies / Criminal Law

Cultural Studies / Media Studies

Social

bookmarkingEducation

Social networking Languages

Video sharing Business / Economics

Photo sharing Communication Design

Virtual worlds Languages

Wiki writing

Accounting / Education

Information Technology

Languages / Science

Combined

Web 2.0 tools

Information Management

Information Technology

Field-testing guidelines / improving practice

Case studies involved...

• Introductory workshops

• Meetings with researchers, class observations

• Examples of marked student work, assessment artefacts, etc.

• Focus groups

– Staff reflecting on experience

– Students’ perspective on using Web 2.0 for assessment in HE

Staff reflections

“I think that being involved in something like this gives you an opportunity to step back and look at what you’re doing, through an outsider’s lens. In many ways our discussions with you and some of the questions you were asking gave us something to think about. There was perhaps a little bit of tinkering that could be done around the edges. I think that was really useful for us. We tend to use our intuition a lot with this type of thing. To actually have to sit down and explain to someone and justify what we’re doing and why we think it’s working – it reinforced for us that we were on the right track.”

Staff reflections

“I separated the technology from the assessment and I think the basics around good assessment practice are still the same principles. What new technology does is just make you review things and think about it differently in terms of implementation ... We wanted to review our process because, you know, we’re putting ourselves out there. We’re still not there, but we’re putting ourselves out there to trial things [and] that leads to review”

Staff reflections

“[I found] tension between wanting to promote the benefits of Web 2.0 in terms of innovative and flexible modes of engaging the students and I think sometimes when it comes to assessment too much innovation and flexibility can cause real problems or it certainly did in our students [...] Students really want maximum clarity. They really want to be told how many entries they’ve got to do, when they’ve got to do them and this kind of thing.”

4. Producing and sharing resources

• Watch this space:

http://web2assessment.blogspot.com/

• Bookmarks: www.citeulike.org/tag/assessment20

http://web2assessment.blogspot.com/

http://www.citeulike.org/tag/assessment20

Publications and activities

Gray, K., Thompson, C., Clerehan, R., Sheard, J., & Hamilton, M. (2008). Web 2.0 authorship: Issues of referencing and citation for academic integrity. The Internet and Higher Education, 11(2), 112-118.

Gray, K., Thompson, C., Sheard, J., Clerehan, R., & Hamilton, M. (2010). Students as web 2.0 authors: Implications for assessment design and conduct. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(1), 105-122.

Webinar: www.transformingassessment.com/events_26_may_2010.php

Workshops 2010-11 @ HERDSA, ATN Assessment, ASCILITE, Global Learn Asia Pacific

AJET Special Issue on Assessing Students’ Web 2.0 Activities in Higher Education: http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/about/special-issues/assess-students-web2-2011.html

http://www.transformingassessment.com/events_26_may_2010.php

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/about/special-issues/assess-students-web2-2011.html









AcknowledgementsProject Advisory Group• Matthew Allen, Bill Anderson, Greg Battye, Robyn Benson, Tracey Bretag, Jenny Buckworth,

Denise Chalmers, Geoffrey Crisp, Leitha Delves, Bobby Elliott, Jacqui Ewart, Glenn Finger, Tom Franklin, Merrilyn Goos, Scott Grant, Ashley Holmes, Christopher Hughes, David Jones, Marj Kibby, Adrian Kirkwood, Mark Lee, Catherine McLoughlin, Beverley Oliver, Kaz Ross, Alison Ruth, Royce Sadler, Mary Simpson, Arthur Winzenried, Katina Zammit, Lynette Zeeng.

Project Reference Group• Michael Abulencia, Robyn Benson, John Benwell, Marsha Berry, Marilys Guillemin, Laura

Harris, Deborah Jones, Gregor Kennedy, Shaun Khoo, George Kotsanas, Lauren O’Dwyer, Jason Patten, Emma Read, Julianne Reid, Gordon Sanson, Cristina Varsavsky.

Project Pilot-testing Group• Matthew Absolom, Anne Davies, Cathy Farrell, Scott Grant, Terry Hallahan, Michael

Henderson, John Hurst, Ramon Lobato, Warren McKeown, Michael Nott, Kerry Pantzopoulos, Michele Ruyters, Michael Smith, Sandra Smith, Robyn Spence-Brown, Elizabeth Stewart, John Terrell, Jenny Weight, Lynette Zeeng

ALTC Support for this project has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd. (www.altc.edu.au), an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The views expressed in this presentation do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, or the views of individual contributors apart from the project team.

http://www.altc.edu.au/