Group items tagged

Jenny Mackness on the experience, and some of the pitfalls,mot peer assessment on Coursera (Seb Schmoller has also written about this)

Just published. I really liked this section: "Rather than data-driven-decision making, it seems to me we need a culture of decision-driven data collection-the data are collected only after a clear theory of how they are to be used has been developed, to be certain that they will be usable. The argument I am making here is that for instructional guidance, teachers simply do not need or find useful (and certainly do not want to wait, or to pay, for) the precision that the educational measurement community is used to providing. All this may seem like a counsel of despair, so perhaps it is appropriate to conclude these reflections by saying that I am actually very positive about the role that assessment can have in improving schooling. First, as Haertel points out, often the unit of action is the instructional group rather than the individual student. For this reason, Caroline Wylie and I have been exploring the use of single items that can be embedded in instructional episodes (Wiliam, 2011; Wylie & Wiliam, 2006, 2007). The response of one student to one item is not particularly meaningful, but the response of a class of 30 students to a single item does give the teacher useful information about whether to move on, or to review an instructional episode."

Getting on for 15 years ago I put David Wiley's precursor to Creative Commons "Open Content" licence on the wholly online Learning To Teach Online Course that I played a role in, having read about Wiley and the licence in the Economist. Wiley is still active in this field and this post has a very incisive observation in it about personalisation. I do not know whether I agree with it fully (adaptive learning and algorithms may/should have a role too): "There is simply no way to scale the centralized creation of educational materials personalized for everyone in the world (cf. the 15 years of learning objects hype and investment, which feels very similar to the current MOOC mania). Perhaps the only way to accomplish the amount of personalization necessary to achieve high quality at scale is to enable decentralized personalization to be performed locally by peers, teachers, parents, and others. And given the absolute madness of international copyright law there is no rights and royalties regime under which this personalization could possibly happen. The only practicable solution is to provide free, universal access to content, assessments, and other resources that includes free 4Rs permissions that empower local actors to engage in localization and redistribution."

Comprehensive overview by Paul Stacey of MOOC learning methods. (I do not wholly agree with his assessment of the AI/Udacity learning methods.)

This publication was developed by Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić and Sir John Daniel who are Senior Advisors to Academic Partnerships as well as Neil Butcher and Merridy Wilson-Strydom. It has a traditional feel, and is HE oriented. But the underlying principles are clear and useful. The 28-page, 2.7MB document is available from http://www.academicpartnerships.com/docs/default-document-library/newbooklet15_singleb.pdf?sfvrsn=2 It covers the following topics: - What is online learning? - How is online learning offered? - What constitutes quality in online learning? - How can institutions assure quality? - What institutional structures and staffing resources do you need for ensuring quality in online learning? - What resources should you allocate to developing quality online learning? - How can students judge the quality of online courses? - How can instructional design, learning materials, and course presentation contribute to quality online learning? - How can the structure of the virtual environment facilitate quality online learning? - What do web design and web usability factors contribute to quality? - How can you use media (video, graphics, audio, animation and simulation) to enhance quality in online learning? - What online assessment and assignment methodologies promote quality learning? - How do you ensure examination security? - What strategies can you deploy for interaction and student community building? - How can teaching and facilitation contribute to ensuring quality? - What support should students receive? - Annotated Reading List: Benchmarks for Quality Online Learning

I think this is a cannier- than-many assessment of the MOOC platform situation.

This is a bit long-winded and not quite the Woodward/Bernstein exposé it thinks it is, but provides a critical assessment of whether the scaling up economies of MOOCs tend to disappear when you add back the elements that make the course equivalent to fully-fledged masters degrees

108 page US-oriented report by SRI International funded by the Gates Foundation. Describes the different design approaches taken by six providers, with a profile for each provider. Has some interesting concluding comments about instructional approaches, media design, and approaches to assessment/feedback, with a strong push for better (rather than non) use of analytics and adaptive learning approaches.

This reads as if it has had the attention of a PR person. Here is the key para concerning maths: "We know that students learn at different speeds. This is particularly the case in the mathematical sciences, where it just takes a while to really understand certain concepts. Rushing students through a timed curriculum with a pre-defined pace cannot be the best way to achieve lasting success. In our remedial math class, we only gave students a single chance to pass various exams. If they even failed the first midterm, they failed the class. On campus, multiple chances are offered. There are clear opportunities to rethink assessment as a whole, especially as we open up new pacing options."

It feels to me there are important lessons from this that should be incorporated in our Marketing and Learner Engagement work. e.g. how much do we leave it open vs target hard-to-reach learners

Would there be scope to use Mozilla Open Badges as a core element of the Applied Maths Course? If there is, should we be investigating the practicalities?