This set of slides was produced by Jane Hart and is available at the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. It is the collective view of 200 learning professionals worldwide who contributed their Top 10 Tools for Learning. Not surprisingly, many of the nominations are Web 2.0 tools that promote a social, collaborative, sharing approach to learning.
Came across an ad for this conference today on the IFETS listserv. Looks like it will be interesting if the keynotes are anything to go by. It is being organised in conjunction with the Re-engineering Assessment Practices (REAP) project, a GBP1m initiative funded by the Scottish Funding Council under its e-Learning Transformation initiative. The focus is on assessment for learning in tertiary education, and there are three themes to be addressed via the keynotes, case studies and asynchronous discussions:
* Assessment and the first year experience
* Great designs for assessment
* Institutional strategies (designs) for assessment
One of the challenges faced by institutions offering global educational services using globally distributed faculty is arriving at globally acceptable grading standards. There are 7-point grading scales, 4-point grading scales, alpha-grading systems and plain old percentages. Each schema is a different ‘language’ in that if one has grown accustomed to one system, it is not always a straightforward process ‘translating’ your grades (and associated standards) into another system.
Take “70%” for example. What information does this convey? In the United States, a student would most likely be disappointed with such a low mark. In India, on the other hand, a student would be delighted to have performed so well. Herein lies the problem. If you have an Indian professor with a class largely comprising North Americans (or vice versa!) then, left to their own devices, it is a recipe for disaster.
One way around this is to grade to a standard set of assessment criteria and work from a standard set of grade descriptions. While not a perfect solution, it does make life a little easier come grade moderation time.
I gave a seminar today at U21G on OBOW (open book, open-web) examination design principles. The ppt file is pretty large (7.55MB), so I have also saved it in pdf format (still big at 2.51MB!). The main purpose of this presentation is to provide practical advice on the construction of this type of assessment instrument.
