inner-action

The importance of Assessment Strategies

Carl Berger gave a great talk at the NLII about the need for different assessment strategies.

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/powerpoint/258,2,NlII
Spring Focus:  Assessment and evaluation of emergent practices

You don't get to see him flailing his arms around or hear the passion in his voice, but if you read through the slides you get a good idea that what he is saying is that we need to think about assessment in different ways than we have in the past.

And he is right.

Ever since his talk, I've been thinking about how we as educators of the educators can affect change in the process of assessment. If I am going to say what I said in previous posts, that we think and more importantly, do things in different ways, I can't write an edict that says assessment must be done in a particular manner.

It will be vital, then, to provide educators with a list of strategies that would help them expand the way they assess. The strategies would come with tips, warnings, caveats, what ever would help the educator select the right assessment for them to apply and their students to benefit from.

Take a minute and think about that last statement.

It must be a strategy that the educator is comfortable with. If the educator feels awkward or uncomfortable with the assessment tool, then they will not put their all into it.

And it must be an assessment that will measure knowledge accurately. This will mean that the strategies we provide to the educator will, ideally be, multidimensional or be able to be combined with other assessments on the same topic.

Learning: The Non-Traditional Approach

There is nothing better that a girl from St. Louis can be happy about: Thinking about learning by using Baseball as a metaphor. The only downside is that it was the Red Socks that took advantage, and that allowed them to steal the national championship.

Again from the Chief Learning Officer:

http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=874&zoneid=63

Important quote:

"Baseball is rooted in history and dominated by tradition. The majority of coaches, managers, scouts and front-office staff have largely used the same methods to evaluate personnel: trusting the mind of experience. The “experts” often ultimately relied on gut instinct and what they saw with their own two eyes to guide personnel decisions. In most situations, raw talent was the overriding factor in decisions. However, baseball is a game of numbers, and these same individuals have relied on statistics to augment their opinions.

Everything in the game today is measured, but traditionally only a subset of this data garnered much attention. The age-old, simple metrics of batting average, runs batted in and home runs have been used as the primary measurement of a hitter by almost everyone associated with the game since the late 1800s.

The problem with these common measurements is that, like many things in life, they don’t take into account the realities of the game. Batting average (hits divided by at bats), for example, is completely unaffected when a player achieves a base on balls (walks). Walking is immensely valuable to an offense because it puts a runner on base and increases the team’s chance of scoring a run—but the batting average measurement ignores it completely.

Whether it’s performance data for an individual or measurements on programs, corporate America also has largely relied on a core set of simple metrics. Progressive learning practitioners today recognize that several of these metrics are outdated, and a much more detailed analysis is necessary to make informed decisions. More importantly, there’s been increasing recognition that learning metrics are most useful when directly tied to business productivity."

What this says to me is that great success can be achieved, if we take the time to look at the team we are working with, assess individuals for their strengths and then work with them to become better players.

Here are the author's 5 correlations matched with 5 Correlations for Learning:

5 Correlations to Baseball	5 Correlations to Creating Learning
Common Measurements did not take the realities of the game into account.	Multiple choice assessments do not reflect the application of learning.
Ultimately, runs win the games, not hits.	Ultimately, getting all students to  participate in the learning process, makes them all better learners.
Innovative uses of software have significantly changed the game.	Innovative use of software can help students who learn in non traditional ways.
Fiscal irresponsibility is the single quickest way to hamstring a franchise for a decade.	Assessment irresponsibility is the single quickest way to learning failure.
During the season and during the game, data is critical to performance on the field.	Formative assessments are key to learning performance

Strategies for Managing Scalable Content

This article comes from Chief Learning Officer.

http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=881&zoneid=71

What I find interesting and right on the dot is this quote:

"The Swiss Army Knife has a reputation as a handy tool, a multi-functional device that can perform a variety of tasks in a pinch. Return from lunch with a nagging impediment lodged between your teeth? Break out the plastic toothpick. Cooking up some baked beans at a campsite? Use the can opener. Receive a FedEx at your front door? Open it with the blade.

When presented with industrial-strength tasks, however, there are much more appropriate tools. Dental floss, for example, is a much better solution for dental hygiene than a plastic toothpick, and is used by millions as part of a daily cleaning ritual. Counter-mounted can openers yield much better results than handheld devices, and can be found within the kitchens of restaurants. Rubber-gripped box cutters are infinitely more effective at slicing packing tape than two-inch blades, and are used by loading dock staff at department stores everywhere."

I hope this prompts you to think about the way that you use and choose tools for your university. Even though we have CMSs and LCMs at our beck and call, are they the right tool for the job? When do we, both as individuals and as universities, need to start looking beyond what is at hand and start looking at what is handy?

The implications that weigh this decision down are support, reliability, flexibility, scalability and just how many programs do we have to run though before we find the right one? (the answer to that, of course, is that we will never find the right program because we will always find some thing that is a bit righter.

Games Thinkers like to Play

I've played this game with my Niece Maggie and Sister Beth.

The object of the game is to add as many 3+ syllable words into what you are talking about. You only get a point if the polysyllabic word is not common, it is the correct word to use and you didn't have to introduce some off-beat topic to say it.

So, assessment would not count, but countenance would.

"An assessment of his countenance indicated that he was distressed." would only give you 1 point.

Based on playing with Maggie, Beth and I added the option of using single syllable words that are uncommon, but both players feel are the perfect word to describe the situation.

An example might be using elan as opposed to class. Two syllable words could get credit, but I would only give 1/2 point.

This game is best played when you are going to spend a great deal of time with someone, so that the conversation can drift towards multiple topics, thus allowing the opportunity for true preeminent player to surface. (1 point for preeminent and 1/2 for surface becase even though it is a great use of word surface, it is two syllables.)

How to KNOW you are a Thinker

Andrea had a good way to know if you are a thinker. Ask yourself, Have you ever been in a group that is discussing a topic and when you chime in everyone turns to look at you like you just said something that is way out in left field?  If so, then there is a good chance you have a lot of thinker inside.

Knowers, Thinkers and Doers

I am at the NLII focus session for Best Practices in Emerging Technologies. The conference was great, and I’ll be sending on some great information soon.

Right now, I’d like to talk about the great conversation I had afterwards. A long-time friend Andrea and I went down to the bar to get something to eat and relax. There were others from the conference in the room, and after her co-workers left, Cara came over to our table and asked if she could join us.

As women, there was no shortage of what to talk about, but some how the conversation drifted towards different ways of understanding things. I told them about a thought I had about how the world was made of knowers, thinkers and doers. Knowers are those folks who just know stuff. They got As in spelling and could tell you when the Crimea war was fought. There are also Thinkers. Thinkers cannot be bothered about details, but they have a grasp of the bigger picture and can tie what seems like disparate information to the topic at hand. Doers are those that can take something and make it work or worth more. They do this by sheer force of will.

I know this is a bit simplistic, but it helps me organize the way people are. Of course, we are all bits and pieces of all types, and those that are the most happy in life are those that use their type to their best advantage. But it is difficult to understand your strengths when they are not valued by others.

Unfortunately, traditional education is rife with assessments that measure only the progress of the knowers. A personal example for me was in Junior High. The ability to take advanced courses in science was based on how well you did in math. I am not good at math unless it has a process. I only got credit for knowing the process, never for getting the answer “right”. Then, as now, access to advanced science classes was out of reach for me. But, I am really good at the sciences that lean towards the biological, because they are about connections.

This need for society to measure only the “measurable” is disastrous for the thinker and the doer. One solution is to let the students write essays. That is a start, but here is the catch: many thinkers and doers cannot spell. Thinkers will write beyond what is requested and doers will write less, because they need to “do” the problem before they can explain the problem.

If we are going to rely on multiple choice and essays define what our learners learn, then we are not affording them the credit and respect they deserve.

I believe it is our responsibility to help faculty, and the general pubic, to devise ways of measuring the skills and knowledge of the thinkers and doers. (I believe that by doing this, we will also improve our measurement of the thinkers both positively as well as negatively.) This can be as easily as offering multiple ways of presenting homework. But there is more we can do, I’m just not sure what to suggest or how it will work.

This blog is not called inner-action just because I am a crappy speller. It is because inside of all of us there is so much knowledge, understanding and ability, that needs to be recognized, valued and appreciated. As educators, we need to bring the learners’ best talents to the fore.

Personal Repositories

Personal Repositories have been around for ever, and I bet there is a dusty one in your office, your filing cabinet.

There are newer ways, you can save files on your computer.

But both methods lack the ability to add meta-data that really makes locating and retrieving information easily. To remedy that, I've started using some of my blog space as my personal repository. By entering in basic information about the resource, and assigning it a category, I am able to locate articles and links that are important to me. The added bonus, is it is available anywhere.

Do we have a content problem?

I'd like to comment on what Seb has started with his posting "Do we have a content problem?"

In the South we start with a nice complement like, "God bless Patty, she is the sweetest person," and then are able to go in for the kill with something like, What ever possessed her to dye her hair red?" The comment below follows a similar format.

I am coming to the same point Seb did in his introduction. I don't need any more information sources. I'm not interested in scouring repositories for the perfect learning object. I agree with Folksonomies folks, repositories are filled with really useful information categorized by people who are, well,  not me. I'm not as interested in what others think belongs in the behemoth repositories as I am about making my own.

I've got my very own personal learning repository: it's my blog called the Friday Report. When information comes my way I post it on that blog, categorize it the way I want it to be categorized, and find the information at any time. I collect information like a sheller on the beach, picking up random objects and deciding whether to keep them or see how far out in the ocean I can throw them. I have this luxury because I use an aggregator. It brings information to me in waves.

Where I might differ from Seb, is that being an instructional developer, I do want quality content, and I realize the importance of such content to providing the foundation for academic discourse. Discourse is not created without the building of community. Initial community within the course is built by the instructor, and an important method is the presentation of knowledge. This takes all learners to a common level of understanding about the topic, and prepares them to discuss. The tone and tenor of the instructor is extremely important in the process as they also need to build commonalities between the learner.

What we must remember, is we are talking about for most of higher education is a community of learners who are young adults. Additionally, the learners may not know each other, may not want to be in the class and may not be learners who like to talk, but learners who like to read. We must allow them time and opportunity to learn, absorb, reflect on the contnet to be discussed before they are able to discuss. It is impossible for instructors to cordon off one sector of their course and crown that section king. Unless of course, the other "subjects" are attended to also.

[If you have read Seb's work, at this point you might just be saying, well, she didn't really get the point, and the point is that interaction is vital. I agree whole heartily with that concept, but not to it's exclusivity. This blog is dedicated to the promotion of interactions in higher education, and will be discussing the topic ad nauseam in the future.]

Blogs in Higher Ed: Personal Voice as Part of Learning

Concise article on successes and failures of blogging in the classroom. Recommendations to improve success are found at the bottom.

Blogs in Higher Ed: Personal Voice as Part of Learning

By Ruth Reynard

The use of Internet technology to facilitate interaction, communication, and collaboration is well documented but its use in establishing and developing "personal voice" as part of learning is also now being addressed through the use of blogs. Finding personal voice as a pedagogical method is important to establish learner identity and focus, and journaling has long been recognized as an effective way to provide space for this to occur. The blog, however, provides a context in which personal voice can be "published" by the student, which means that attention is given to content, relevancy, and connection with learning outcomes to a higher degree than a traditional journal submission. The idea that more than one person will view the work is quite powerful in promoting a sense of ownership from the student. Teachers can also benefit from "hearing" the personal voice of their students to begin to really understand the learning path of each student through a course.

In our initial studies we have been interested specifically in asking:

• Is blogging perceived as a good way to establish personal voice by both students and instructors?
• Is there a tension created by the published nature of the blog?
• What do instructors need to do to contextualize blogging in a course?