Monday, December 18, 2006
Day 2 - Second Session
This session was about using discussion groups, and was Alan Cann, an academic from Leicester.
Said that most web 2.0 stuff won't work in education because few people will participate if it is not assessed. I would argue that assessment is not as importance as relevance: if students understand how it will help their learning.
He wanted to get more people to participate, so he had groups of 8-15 in each discussion group (optimum size).
Discussion contributions were assessed (15% of mark), replacing an essay.
-Had an explicit definition of a contribution (not just yes, I agree)
Did an icebreaker activity to build a community.
Had 87,000 hits in 10 weeks. Groups were 66% of the hits.
Number of hits dropped as things went on, saw this as a sign that students were not engaging anymore with activity. Will try with switching to wiki half-way through to get more novelty.
Said females had more hits, but same number of posts as males. Guy from University Maastricht next to me said his research said no gender difference, so not sure how reliable that conclusion was.
Recommends:
Integration into face-to-face
Ice Breaker 'e-tivity'
Proportion of marks (10-15%)
Balance assessment load
Group size 8-15
Use VLE: feedback and marks via VLE
staff trained in emoderating skills
Run all work through TurnItIn
Hadn't thought of using peer assessment of contributions.
All in all, it seemed like he was aiming for a model of successful discussion board interaction. This model probably works, but doesn't seem like the end all and be all of discussion boards. The requirement of a proportion of marks and an e-tivity seemed a bit fixed.
Said that most web 2.0 stuff won't work in education because few people will participate if it is not assessed. I would argue that assessment is not as importance as relevance: if students understand how it will help their learning.
He wanted to get more people to participate, so he had groups of 8-15 in each discussion group (optimum size).
Discussion contributions were assessed (15% of mark), replacing an essay.
-Had an explicit definition of a contribution (not just yes, I agree)
Did an icebreaker activity to build a community.
Had 87,000 hits in 10 weeks. Groups were 66% of the hits.
Number of hits dropped as things went on, saw this as a sign that students were not engaging anymore with activity. Will try with switching to wiki half-way through to get more novelty.
Said females had more hits, but same number of posts as males. Guy from University Maastricht next to me said his research said no gender difference, so not sure how reliable that conclusion was.
Recommends:
Integration into face-to-face
Ice Breaker 'e-tivity'
Proportion of marks (10-15%)
Balance assessment load
Group size 8-15
Use VLE: feedback and marks via VLE
staff trained in emoderating skills
Run all work through TurnItIn
Hadn't thought of using peer assessment of contributions.
All in all, it seemed like he was aiming for a model of successful discussion board interaction. This model probably works, but doesn't seem like the end all and be all of discussion boards. The requirement of a proportion of marks and an e-tivity seemed a bit fixed.
// posted by Brian @ 5:16 PM 
