Week 4 reflections

The week 4 was a little stressful at the level of mental work. There were lot many things going on in the life and I was little tensed for the final paper preparation. I read the guidelines 2-3 times. Initially, when I read it for the first time, it looked a lot of work and then with consecutive readings, it starting making more sense to me. But still there are a lot of things those have to be taken care of while preparing the final paper and then the rubrics!  I have started working on the same and will try to meet the guidelines.

There were many interesting readings, video and the podcast. The podcast had some problem. It stopped after a while but then I could listen the whole lecture. This provides and interesting insight into the universal course design which can be accesses successfully by the major chunk of the population including persons defined as disabled under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These lectures also helped me understand that Universal design and accessibility are not synonymous and clarified any confusion between the two terms.  The course and the design of the web  designed such that it can be accesses by the people with disabilities or without disabilities.

This week also helped in getting understanding of  what is the best way of carrying out assessment -9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning, explains Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve.

While brainstorming on Accessibility issue and my role in team, I thought of taking the role of the content specialist and the technologists. I saw that role has already been taken up by anyone else in my group. I decided that I can still take up the role of a technologist as an assistant to the lead. In that case, I will be able to learn as well as fulfill my desire of playing a role of technologist. 

This week, I acted funny and foolish. In the Forum: 4:4 Assessing Collaborative Projects, I misinterpreted the whole question. I took it to be a general group grading in term of a classroom scenario. Then I realized that this particularly ask about the group work we did  the last week. So, I changed my response.

Top three characteristics of an online learner

Top three characteristics of an online learner are:

Self-Motivation:  This is one of the most important traits of an online learner. The learners have to be independent and self-derived in order attain the goals. Students must understand what is expected out of them and they should meet instructor’s expectations as well as the objectives set for the program.

In case the students lack self-discipline and time-management skills, the instructors and people around, have a great role to play. Instructor can engage them in conversation and ask them about the difficulties they face while studying. They can write journals and the reflections would help them learn and motivate to move on. As an instructor I would try to show my students that I’m a human being behind their computer screen. I also recognize their emotions, needs and humanity. I would like to share my ideas with them and then, invite them to share their views with me.

Good reader and communicator: An online learner has to show good skills in reading and communication because this is required to convey thoughts, ideas and share concerns. Also, in order to understand and apply learned material to write assignment and writing to other classmates and instructor, students have to be good in reading and communication.

In order to enhance these skills, students need support from instructor, family members, peers  and online resources(dictionary, spell check). They may take a small course in editing and reading also. Local libraries sometimes also have small programs in reading and communication skills. They may get a support group in library or nearby community center.

Organization of time and daily routine: Usually online learners have so much going on in their lives other than taking the online course. The organization of time and space is absolutely necessary in order to meet deadlines for the assignments, discussions and reading. They need to organize study space, and then they need to find time to actually study.

Students those don’t have good organizational skills might learn it over the time. I learnt it by the time my first week in this course was over.  They need support of family members, friends and other loved ones. Students also need to communicate to themselves and people around,  that this ’particular hour’  is my study hour and they don’t want any disturbance. Finding help from classmates, getting an idea how they organize their time, can be helpful.

One aspect of online delivery, which can surpass that of a face-to-face classroom, is of flexibility of time, convenience of studying from home while at the same time having cultural diverse group interactions.

An aspect of learning in a social context is the development of “ learning communities”( Vygotsky, 1978) centered around student-to-student interactions and the exchange of ideas(discussion boards, email, chat). Another one can be for learners those are seeking help in libraries or other support group in their locality(community center)

Savneet Singh

Hello everyone,  

This is Savneet Singh, from a beautiful city Bellevue, Washington. It is spring time and you can see nature at its best all over the place. I am nature lover, in fact, mother earth lover. I enjoy reading and writing about the health, environment & life related stuff, and doing volunteer work. I practice yoga and meditation with the sunrise. Whenever I get time, I go for trailing, walking or hiking. 

My classroom is going to be my  pentagonal laptop desk kept besides my bed.

I hold Post Graduate degree in Education as well as in Ecology & Environment. My M.Ed program gave me an in-depth and comprehensive insight of philosophical, psychological, social and economic aspects of education. I also hold a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.). This program gave me a chance to enhance my critical thinking, writing, verbal and quantitative reasoning skills. The M.Sc in Ecology & Environment helped me in getting chummy with nature.

 I started my career as a subject expert for an educational software company. But, I couldn't work there for a long, because I met an accident and had to stay home for some time. After that incidence, I started teaching at a primary school. Since then, I have yearned to move ahead in computer aided learning. I’ve 5 years of professional teaching experience. I taught Science, English and Environment to primary and  7^th to 10^th grade  students. I played the role of the head of Environment department and had an independent decision-making authority. Teaching students coming from rural areas, low income families and minority section helped me in adding patience, endurance and fortitude.  

During these 5 years, computer aided teaching was an integral part of my day to day lesson planning. I used Power-point presentations, graphs, excel sheets and animated DVD’s. I loved to see the sparkling eyes of my student while enjoying an interactive and animated presentation or the DVD, more than any traditional classroom lecture, which I might have delivered on the same topic. Through my experience, I came to know that kind of computer program, online activity or game should be age appropriate and should precisely fit in the context and needs of the students.

 I’m glad to say that, I am a national scholarship holder(India), given to only 0.1% students, those get merit in Secondary school exams.

This course will enhance my pre-existing skills in the field of education as well as in web-development and help in learning ropes of e-learning.

  

Developing a Rubric

Rubrics are the tools which help to measure the degree to which learners are acquiring knowledge, skills and attitude, that was intended. Rubrics provide us with a way to evaluate and provide feedback on learning process. Rubrics also give details of the practical and conceptual outcomes of the process and the product. Instructors record the learners’ progress and report the feedback through rubrics. They can further be used in collaborative learning environment where fellow leaners are involved in the creation of the rubrics(We are going to do this for our final papers)

My proposed course is ABCs of Chemistry and the target audience is learners from a variety of the science and health-related fields, proficient in 10th grade reading and math. I’ll use rubrics to lay the guidelines to develop a new course. Rubrics are a tool for the evaluation of the existing course and revise them as per the suggestions. Rubrics help in identifying what kind of technology tools are just the right match for a given online course.  I also see rubrics useful in reflecting upon student to student and student to instructor interaction strategies. Rubrics also provide an evidence on how ‘web-based tools can play in the active learning process and  interactive assessment’.( Byers, C. (2002). Interactive assessment and course transformation using web-based tools. Retrieved from http://technologysource.org/article/interactive_assessment_and_course_transformation_using_webbased_tools/) 

Web content accessibility

The accessibility issue I’ll like to take is alternative modes of presenting information (auditory, visual, text) and color blindness.  I plan to use following alternative techniques to present the information:

Providing text equivalent for every non-text items- As the mouse is rolled over the graphic, animation, charts, image or map, the Internet explore shows the text box describing the information conveyed.  The assistive technology devices (screen readers and Braille displays) can read the text associated with the image. For the detailed text explanation of charts and graphs, there can be a linked page.

Transcription of audio and video content- This technique is useful for people with vision and hearing impairments. The transcript can be synchronous, i.e. plays with the audio or video content, also called as captions, or can be, what is known as audio descriptions. It only displays important information from the video or audio of a multimedia presentation. The transcripts may or may not be the part of the same webpage.

Use of context and markup to convey any information when color is used: Cognizance of the combinations of foreground and background colors by choosing highly contrastive colors for the foreground and background. It is also very important because people with different types of color deficits or for people who are using monochrome displays need to have sufficient contrast.

I will take up the role of a content specialist and I would like to be the part technology team. The reason is that I’m not a pure technologist, so I better be assisting a technologist. 

References:

Wendy Chisholm, T. R. &. D. C. (1999). Web content accessibility guidelines 1.0. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/.

Beyers, C. (2002) Interactive Assessment and Course Transformation Using Web-Based Tools http://technologysource.org/article/interactive_assessment_and_course_transformation_using_webbased_tools/ 

Developing a Rubric

While I was going through the website-Rubistar.com given in the course material of week 4, I synthesized that an instructor or evaluator must follow some steps to develop the rubrics. The first and foremost important task is to define the learning outcome or objective of the product/course/lesson. The instructor/evaluator should define possible highest performance to the lowest performance levels that students would possibly demonstrate. Make sure that each level should be directly observable. To describe each level, as high quality, average, and low, evaluator must have at least three samples of each level. The samples will help to evaluate the students’ performance.

Assign numerical or qualitative, or a combination of both, score for each level, from highest to lowest, or vice versa.

Once each level is determined, give the descriptions on how to use this. Ask students to give the feedback. This will make sure that each level is clearly understood by the students and what each level represents in relation to scores assigned. This kind of feedback ensures that students clearly understand how they are being evaluated and the standards that they are being held accountable to achieve. Rubrics are a great way  to  help students self- diagnose strengths and weaknesses of their own work and  they become part of the "self assessment" process.

Good Practice for Assessing Students

I just finished reading - 9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning  from the course material of week 4. This paper gives a deeper insight of what are the best practices of assessing the learning. The paper starts with a universal fact that assessment is not in end itself but it is a vehicle for educational improvement. I remember when we were in school and, after we had our final exam done, we used to say- I’ll never see these books again. But the truth is that those books laid foundation for the next year and assessment made that foundation even stronger.

Assessment is not mere demonstration of some crammed facts, spitted out on paper in form of one word answers, choosing right answer of filling the blanks. It is much more than that. Assessment should find the level multidimensional and integrated performance over the time. For focused and clear assessment, it should have a clear goal so that what are the expected outcomes of the learning can be described and achieved.  assessment can also help instructors and the curriculum developers to see what are the best teaching practices and the environment for learning. Episodic assessment such as having half yearly or the final exams may not be a good practice for the learning outcomes. The assessment which is continuous and ongoing and take various tools into consideration will assess the learners on the basis of improvement they have shown over a period of time.

Consider, a 6^th grade student who has to appear for traditional final exams in the school next week, but couldn’t study because of prevailing home conditions - a sick father and full time working mom. If he couldn’t do better in exam, then generalizing that he is not good at studies is purely wrong.

The other fact which this paper reveals is that it shouldn’t be the instructor/teacher who is solely responsible for the assessment of students but student-affairs educators, librarians, administrators, and students can also  play an important role in overall assessment of a learner.

I really liked the ideas presented in this paper as they throw light on what  assessment basically is. In India, most of the schools judge students’ performance by looking at the mark sheet obtained at the end of the year. But, I am happy to find that things are changing and continuous and comprehensive assessment is being practiced by many schools now a days.