Day: May 22, 2011

Thankfully this week’s brain teaser is finished. The past two weeks were spent with my band training in a new drummer and retraining a bass player that used to play in my band, before his back surgery. My new drummer has just had major heart surgery and my bass player is, finally, recovered from that major back surgery. I have a new rule: No more operations or Dying!! So, we gave our concert or had our gig last night. My legs and feet are still sore from all the bouncing around with my percussion instruments and guitar during the gig. My learning has taken a back seat to the training going on with my band. I have not had the time to spend on my lessons. I have had to cram it all in with the few hours (10 hours or less) I had. I am exhausted!

Today, instead of sleepng in and spending some quality time with my husband, I have been writing blogs and rethinking what I would use as CATs ( classroom training techniques). While this was not hard to do, once I got started…I began to consider what CATs are really all about. They are about the questions you are asking your students. Now that is the hardest part of the whole lesson design or lesson development process. I wonder if I will sleep tonight wondering if, I am able to ask those wonderful questions to direct their minds where I want them to go. Part of any eLearning course should be a course on how to ask the right questions.

Completely off the subject, most of my classmates seldom write anything personal in their blogs. I think their training and professionalism must discourage them from that sort of communication with the outside world and their students. Most of the time, the discussions in our diigo site are intellectualizing on class diigo entries. Each week we entry posts and blogs we have found during our reseach of the topics. Each of us has a totally different educational and teaching background. I seem to be the only one sharing what they must consider to be unprofessional information, for example, the statements I have made in this blog. What it feels like is people talking at each other rather than to each other. Humor is seldom seen in a post or entry…except from the instructor who probably has learned life can be very dull and stressful if humor is not an outlet for frustrations. But then again, humor has become the bad guy with people taking offense easily at just about anything said.  Okay, enough of this silly rant!

This week we were not told what to write about…so, taking a lazy person’s way out, I am making this a very short post. I need to get groceries for the week; put the check in the bank from last night and maybe spend some time with my husband. We did,  however, get to see the latest movie by Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I encourage anyone seeing this movie to stay past the credits…there is an ending at the end of them you really must stay to see. It tells it all! I loved the movie. Oh, one last thing…can you imagine Captain Jack Sparrow as a father? Well, quess what pirate fans? Yup, I am going to leave it there…

Since my brain is tired, I decided to let you know my brain flow has stopped completely!

This was another difficult project. Designing a CAT or classroom assessment technique takes a bit of thought. As Bruce stated in his Module 6 blog, you need background information from your students…I would certainly have them enter into a discussion board like Diigo, this type of information, in order to assess where they were at with their learning and why they took the class.  I would have them post some background information about what direction they are headed in with their studies in the future. It would seem prudent to get this information about them, before trying to assess what knowledge they have…after the first one or two modules.

Last quarter we developed our ability to create online assessment or self-help tools (a Google questionnaire) to help the students verbalize what they found difficult and what they would like changed, after each module. I believe that is a good place to start. In an article written on effective clicker questions, the University of Iowa stated Clickers should expose and clarify students’ misconceptions; promote discussion in large group case-based learning and act as a mock exam that gives immediate feedback, in order to assess the mastery of the content. This means that every question should identify what the students have or have not learned in the module being taught.

I think there are two effective ways to cover this territory: Twitter and Blogs. Tweeting is the CAT that would serve the purpose of immediate feedback, during a module (this doesn’t exclude emails which need to be encouraged when problems are encountered). Blogs can be used to assess the thought processes (meta-cognitive) and the results of the students’ ability to critically think about the material and apply the material learned, at the end of the module. Both of these CATs adapt themselves to online learning environments. The bottom line is asking what were the learning goals for that module and what kinds of responses do I expect from them? This moves the spotlight off what CATs a teacher uses to the more important question of what questions are being asked. Each CAT is only as useful as the questions asked.

Another useful CAT was demonstrated in our first eLearning course in a Voice Thread application. Students are encouraged to post comments on the Voice Thread project presented by the class or by the instructor. Sam gave us an example in his class voice thread on digital learners. This is an excellent way to get asynchronous feed back during the module. Skype can be used for a more private one on one discussion about what might be misunderstood by students, as well. The problem will be the ability of the student to feel safe enough to share with the instructor what information was problematic in each module. Anonymity most likely will promote sharing of this kind.

This is where a post board such as Wall Wishers for example could and may be used, also during the module to identify the “muddiest point” or problems within the course material.  If the students created a free email and used a name other than their own, they could post to the wall without giving their name. It would have to be postings with rules. Or not taking ownership for their words and thoughts might help them take a turn toward paths you would not like them to take. I will need to work with the board to determine whether I will actually use this along with blogs, Voice Thread, Twitter, emails and Skype.

The Cats I have chosen are the applications I have had to use as a student. I find they are valuable teaching assessment tools and prefer to stick with the CATs I know best…in the first few
online courses.  Finally I have displayed my check in points which are set before, during and after a module to help determine what needs changing and what other help the students may need to grasp the concepts. Each of the CATS should encourage group activity and discussion, just as they did during the courses I have taken on elearning.

Using the “muddiest point” technique can be done by using the Wall Wishers application. How it is done is stated in the video I have included.