Thread:Initial feedback on the assessment strategy and blueprint (1)

Always a pleasure working with professional and experienced designers.

I do agree -- the Saylor / Washington State assessment strategy will need some tweaking for the OERu delivery model. A few thoughts from my desk to add into the mix:


 * Graded discussion posts in each module. Posts must include responses to other students. Both quantitative and qualitative criteria are used. Marks are given by the instructor.


 * I think that grading discussion posts and encouraging community interaction is a good assessment strategy. In the OERu model, the assessor will only be able to do this once students present themselves for assessment. One way we could implement this is to have a series of portfolio activities where learners must post reflections and respond to other posts and present this as evidence in a portfolio. Another strategy we could think about here is for learners to choose, for example, their ten best posts and ten best responses to other students. From a sociability point of view -- I am concerned about using a single discussion form vehicle -- imagine a single discussion forum with +1000 students. I suggest we provide a variety of places where students might post a discussion point, eg OERu hosted moodle, a personal blog site etc. We can develop a technical solution which could aggregate the links and posts in different places. When the student presents their portfolio -- they simply provide a perma link to the forum post, similarly they can also provide links to where the posted responses to other students.


 * Worksheets requiring small amount of research and explanations on module content. These are marked by the instructor. Each worksheet is worth up to 20 points.


 * Again - -relatively easy to integrate into a portfolio type system. We could pre-prepare boiler plate texts as downloadable word-processor files as worksheets to be submitted in the portfolio. We need to think whether these should be public or private. If private, they could be uploaded somewhere (eg Google docs) and then provide the assessor with access. For the prototype, the drop box could easily be hosted on the OERu Moodle install -- however, when OERu starts getting thousands of learners, we'll need to think about scalability and to what extent we can use open and free webservices around the world.


 * Quizzes: there is a series of open-book, open-notes, "open-friend" quizzes throughout the course. These are quick-answer ways for learners to check their comprehension and celebrate their knowledge of course terminology and concepts. All quizzes are graded, and are meant to be a formative account of where you they are in their learning. Each quiz format contains questions with multiple-choice answers


 * Again easy to implement using the WikiEducator quiz widget. Speaking personally -- I would avoid grading formative assessments in the OERu model because of staffing issues and techical complexities in tracking scores and packaging these into format which could be imported into the host institutions preferred technology.


 * Self-checks are guides to check all components are complete before assignments are sent in.


 * I think its a good strategy to have, for instance, portfolio checklists listing the items (or links) which need to be submitted for assessment. Perhaps we can find or develop some tool in the wiki or elsewhere which will populate the checklist from the course and provide fields for learners to add the links to their portfolio artifacts.


 * Extra credit points may be earned by undertaking additional assignments including a museum or gallery visit


 * A nice option, particularly for learners aiming for a distinction grade. I wonder what the OERu partners would think about this option within their own assessment systems?


 * Collaborative assignments

I think that setting up collaborative assignments can be tricky in this environment. Its not like a traditional cohort where we can divide students into groups. I think we need to be creative here and think about ways of building collaborative elements, but will not disadvantage the learner if a collaborative group fails to do what they intended to do or where the assessment model creates difficult dependencies for learners to achieve the objectives. We need to think about clever and scalable systems of self organisation.


 * College support services

We must be clear in distinguishing support services that will be provided by TRU for learners who will be using TRU for their assessment services versus generic OERu support.

Perhaps the next step is to develop a simplified assessment table breaking down the components of the assessment model into percentages?

Irwin -- I figure that as an experienced designer you have already been thinking about these things and suspect that many of my comments are redundant. In fact, you will no doubt provide better solutions than those I've listed on this page ;-)