Digital Tools for Feedback and Assessment

Janice Johnson (janice.johnson@ubc.ca)
Kele Fleming (kele.fleming@ubc.ca)
Tannis Morgan (Tannis_Morgan@bcit.ca)

Tools, Examples & Resources

Tools & Examples

http://static.flickr.com/61/155770392_241841e4e2_m.jpg∞

CMap∞is a free, downloadable concept mapping tool that has some nice features, including the ability to share concepts maps, make them available on the internet, and allow others to collaborate. It's also cross platform and can be downloaded [http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/∞ here].

Gliffy∞ is a great internet-based tool that lets you quickly create a diagram/visual and then share and collaborate on it with others all in one place. The nice thing about Gliffy is that it has about a 30 second learning curve.

http://www.bubbl.us/∞ is another internet-based tool that functions more like a concept map. This tool also has a quick learning curve and has collaboration and share features.




What is reflection?

• iterative processes of continually assessing and re-assessing one’s work
• promotes deep learning over time
• answers these questions..."What? So What? Now What? (Helen Barrett∞)

What is an e-portfolio?

• online collections of work that represent skills and interests to diverse audiences
• highly customizable
• promotes reflection

Folio thinking enables learners to

• reflect on their learning experiences
• make connections between their academic, personal and career lives
• integrate and synthesize their learning
• set goals and make deliberate choices in their learning career

5 stages of folio thinking: Collect -> Reflect -> Evaluate -> Select -> Present

What is social software?

• enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication (Wikipedia∞)

http://data.tumblr.com/1607586_400.jpg∞
Map of Online Communities
(source: http://scribbling.net∞)

Proprietary tools

• WebCT∞ (student presentation tool)
• Vista∞ (presentation of assignments, blog & journal discussion postings, gradable discussions)
• iWebfolio∞ (web e-portfolio tool developed by Nuventive)

iWebfolio is a web based tool that gives individuals a personalized, flexible online portfolio to store and present a lifetime's worth of educational and professional experience. Students pay approx. $40 per year to maintain an account.

Free tools

• Facebook∞ (social networking website)
• MySpace∞ (social networking website)
• ELGG∞ (learning landscape/social software)
• Eduspaces∞ (main community using the Elgg software)

From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgg_%28software%29∞) Elgg is an open source social networking platform. It offers blog, networking, community, collecting of news using feeds aggregation and file sharing features. Everything can be shared among users with access controls and everything can be cataloged by tags as well. Elgg can be viewed also as a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) or as an Eportfolio tool, wich has its own Presentation tool, that can capture and present any of the contents in it. It can be used also as a tool to create learning networks, fostering the connectivist approach to learning seen in ELearning 2.0.

• KEEP Toolkit∞ (free online e-portfolio tool)

I've just begun to delve into the KEEP Toolkit , a freely hosted and open source tool developed by the folks at Carnegie . The initial description got me curious...

"The KEEP toolkit is a set of web-based tools that help teachers, students and institutions quickly create compact and engaging knowledge representations on the Web"

but "knowledge representations" didn't really tell me a whole lot. I really began to like this tool once I started looking at the templates and the cases, which show how the tool has been used to showcase a redesign of a course or a group of courses, or to showcase a research project. It's also pretty easy to see how this tool could be used for students to present their work, either as a collection ( a portfolio) or as an individual piece.

• Alison Wong's Elgg space∞
• Dennis Yoo's Elgg space∞
• Alison Wong's KEEP ToolKit e-Portfolio∞
• Dennis Yoo's KEEP ToolKit e-Portfolio∞
• UBC's e-Portfolio Project Portfolio∞ (blogfolio)

• Blogger∞ - Blogger was launched in August 1999 as one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools; it is credited for helping popularize the form; now owned by Google. (from Wikipedia)∞
• Wordpress∞ - Distributed free of charge under the GNU General Public License and; has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times to date. (also from Wikipedia)∞
• Edublogs.org∞ - specialized for the educational community
• Textologies course blog∞
• Another example where groups have been incorporated∞
• Request a UBC weblog∞

What is a wiki?



Other uses--please use this space to add your own ideas

• This example∞ uses an image and text within PB wiki. I've used the comments feature to add instructor feedback to the student group work. In this way, the wiki has potentially been used first as a collaboration space, then as a presentation space, and finally as a feedback space.

• I'm not sure who owns this example∞ but it looks interesting: the wiki is being used as a place for student response to a class reading in a given unit, and they are given feedback and a rating within the wiki.
  Some Resources
  
  
• If you're curious to know more about wikis, I'd suggest this great article∞ that Brian Lamb wrote for the E-strategy newsletter.

• I quite like this article∞ that talks about the pedagogical potential of wikis--scroll down to the bottom for some good tips on how to make a wiki work in an instructional context.
  
• This wiki page∞ provides some nice visuals of how group collaborative writing can be structured (in terms of student division of labour) at different stages of the writing process--it doesn't get into student roles, but still useful.

An online collaborative writing space∞ that functions like a Word document.



Google docs functions best in Firefox or Explorer. Once you've signed up for a free account you're ready to go.

Increasingly, course approaches (constructivist approaches) are adopting group work and collaboration on projects as assessed course activities, and students are largely stuck fumbling with sharing word documents in a discussion forum, through IM, or through email. Obviously, distance students don't have the luxury of being able to meet face to face to work on projects together, and even if they can, sometimes it's not always the most efficient way of getting something done.

Note: A separate page has to help students tackle group work process as well as link to some tools to help them with group work.Group Work wiki page∞

Some potential uses for Google Docs

1. In a case study course, as a space where students would work on developing a group response to a case.

2. In courses where peer-evaluation of writing is required, allowing a peer, or group of peers to comment and assist each other's work.

3. I would also recommend it to faculty who are collaborating on research articles.

Computer-Generated Feedback Tools

Concept Tutor∞ falls into a category of assessment tools that provide computer-controlled immediate feedback to what is being learned. Many of these tools are freely available on the internet and have existed since the early 1990s. These include:

Hot Potatoes∞ which can be used for creating interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises.

Quandry∞ is a very cool tool from the same people as Hot Potatoes. It allows you to build Web-based Action Mazes. An Action Maze is a kind of interactive case-study; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it.

Interactive Exercise Makers∞ which can be used for annotating text or creating Cloze exercises, Short answer exercises, mulitple choice, and matching exercises.

Quiz Image∞ is another useful tool for giving feedback on visual knowledge or concepts.

Resources

• UBC's Teaching & Academic Growth (TAG) website∞ - wide range of teaching & learning resources for instructors - UBC's e-Learning website∞ - full of resources & help guides focused on e-learning tools
  
• Wisconsin Technical College System∞ - resources for online learning assessment

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eLI 2007 Participants

What do you hope to get out of this session?

• more interested in feedback than assessment
• interested in using digital tools for student collaboration
• ideas for managing feedback & assessment in online course
• online quizzes, assessment online
• using digital tools for evaluation; want to see what's out there
• exposure to something new that I can implement this year
• what kind of tools to use to provide feedback; peer review; collaborative research & writing & tools you can use
• peer feedback, student self-evaluation
• virtual meeting places where students can conduct small group tutorials
• how to use assessment tools to teach large group
• tools for online assessment
• tools for assessment to support problem-based learning

Teaching Goals

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ETUG 2006 Participants

What do you hope to get out of this session?
- insight into how to improve assessment, esp. for large online classes
- it's TAG time! interested in the topic
- assessment is the achilles heel of teaching! looking for any tools I can find.
- want to improve assessment in my courses
- find assessment one of the most challenging parts of teaching
- learn about how instructors might use assessment
- find digital tools endlessly fascinating and want to learn about as many as I can
- teach large classes; want to learn more about technology
- learn about assessment in general; librarians teach in academic classes and want to find out if assessment works
- want to explore tools to improve our sessions
- want to see what kinds of tools are available
- interested in integrating teaching with technology
- support students & instructors and want to learn about tools that can be used in WebCT
- interested in finding more creative ways of using assessment
- concerned about tone in electronic assessments
- how to streamline assessment & make full use of technology

Teaching Goals
- to assess experiential excercises; show whether students have experienced learning and documented the experience
- practice ways of thinking as an ethnographer & reflect on it
- group project where students are required to bounce ideas off one another; giving & receiving feedback & learning from it
- peer assessment of essays
- write reflections on assigned readings, react to one another's responses & be prepared to talk about it in class
- online homework system; online hints, interactive space -- goal is to teach problem-solving
- teach technical reasoning skills; solve a problem & post on web for peer feedback; write a paper that synthesizes feedback received & problem-solving work
- collaborating on research & brainstorming on keywords; collaborative space that documents research process
- engaging students in first year with learning by using in-class technology like clickers, etc.; how to use the learning tools
- teach the soft skills of being professional
- help learners; their work feel valued, individual interaction with instructors