Thursday's Rants

The morning started with discussions on the final project tomorrow. I will be looking at my Sociology course. My goal is to take a unit and analyze it and then investigate a new models or scaffolds that will incorporate AL's and dynamic active student centered activities.

We moved on to look at evaluation which is a "systematic investigation of the worth or merit of an object" (NSF). Types of evaluation include:
1)Materials Evaluation (expert review, user interaction, usability) basis of formative evaluation
2)Process evaluation (ID process, reflection)
3)Learner Reactions
4)Learner Achievement (sometimes called assessment)
5)Instructional Consequences

We then discussed Assessment listing the different types
1)Objective measures (multiple choice, true-false, matching)vs subjective measures (authentic assessment, performed based)
2)Formative vs summative
3)Criterion-referenced (outcomes-based) vs. norm referenced
Strategies include online quizzes, synchronous and asynchronous communication, portfolio, papers and essays, presentations,journals,concept mapping and simulations/games. The textbook covers assessment in chapter 10 especially page 279.
Assessment strategies must promote as many of the following as possible: immediate feedback,encourage reflection,facilitate scoring, high-stakes scoring, encourage synthesis, enhance motivation, encourage collaborations and facilitate self-assessment.

We then saw a great resource for assessment with different forms and other materials . Please refer to Interactive Learning Systems by Thomas Reeves (http://it.coe.uga.edu/~treeves/)
Another good resource for assessment recommended by Minchie is Teaching with the Technology Studio (http://www.ltts.org/)
The core of evaluation is to focus in on WHAT IT IS YOU WANT TO EVALUATE. Sounds like common sense yet, how many time do we get lost in the process of evaluating?
Another common sense question to answer or concentrate on is - "What is the problem and how will you go about fixing it?"

A very basic discussion occur with Richard, Linda and Amelia about the difference between assessment and evaluation. WOW there seems to be no textbook definition to illustrate the difference. We found an article describing the differences at http://mathstar.nmsu.edu/educ621/frank2001-3.html
In summary - We can evaluate a class but would not want to look at the student and evaluate the person. We would assess the student and their progress. (Thanks Linda Richard and Amelia!)

Next there was the discussion on constructivist vs positivists philosophy of education. The positivist is more the sage on stage where we the instructor provides all the material for the students. The constructivist are more the mentors on the side providing knowledge and help when needed by the students. (Thanks for the discussion Linda and Richard) There was a great web site about Ed Philosophies but I lost it thanks to the MAC. One resource I did not lose was http://www.eduquery.com/construct.htm

It is the end of a long day and I can say that working on the class project really brought the various issues together for me.