General feedback and discussions on the proposed survey
Thanks Wayne for your explanation. If we want to know how other institutions have assessed credit-seeking students taking a MOOC or MOOCish-type of course, why not just ask the institutions? Start putting together some keystone assessments (and related instruments) that are meaningful and relevant to the student but based on the type of MOOC being considered and go with that.
Assessment gets a little slippery because assessment and instruction are (or should be) so closely integrated - at least they will be in most MOOCs. Learners oftentimes fail to distinguish the difference between testing, evaluation, and assessment, plus they might be influenced (positively or negatively) by any of these notions based on a prior experience with a teacher. For this reason, I'm not sure if asking the learners about assessment will get the intended results (I could be wrong.).
Instead of using words like assessment, evaluation, or testing, let's just ask them if they've ever used a blog, wiki, eportfolio, etc.
If we create a questionnaire for institutions, that would be a different story.
Any other thoughts?
Hi Ben,
Absolutely - -the OERu anchor partners will definitely be speaking with the institutions who have presented MOOCs with for-credit options and find out what assessment models and approaches were used.
I also agree that valid and reliable assessment is a complex area and is closely related and part of the overall pedagogy deployed.
I agree with your sentiments by asking folk if they've ever used a blog, wiki or portfolio and am planning to include a question in this survey relating to usage / experience with this media.
Lots of work still needed in planning the OERu -- but on the positive side we are doing this and currently based on our anchor partners we will be able to provide accrediting options for OER learners in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US at this time.
