Individual Assessment in a Collaborative World

Posted by: Britt | February 5, 2009 | 5 Comments |

I had the good fortune last Tuesday to participate in a podcast with Kathyrn Murphy-Judy, professor of French in the School of World Studies here at VCU. Facilitated by Jeff Nugent and joined by Bud Deihl, we spent nearly an hour discussing the uses of social media in our classes. As Jeff set the stage, he noted that as faculty continue to explore ways to take advantage of the learning opportunities afforded by the participatory web, they face new challenges about how to assess student learning in a context that values collaboration and shared knowledge building. After all, we want students to collaborate and build knowledge together, but at the end of the day or course, each student must be assigned a grade.

As always, I learned a lot listening to Kathyrn and bouncing ideas off my two colleagues here in the Center for Teaching Excellence. Have a listen – I would be interested in your thoughts and feedback!

{Photo Credit: JustABigGeek}

under: 21centuryskills, collaboration, teaching, web2.0
Tags: collaboration, learning, socialmedia, Virginia Commonwealth University, web2.0

Responses - Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)

Kia ora Britt

This is a great medium for permitting the fly on the wall to come into being.

Thank you for the opportunity to listen to educators sharing their experiences, ideas, hang-ups as well as possible solutions to what is an ace topic for education in 2009.

We will be reading/hearing/learning more about this in the future, at all academic levels, of that I am quite sure.

Catchya later
from Middle-earth

By: Ken Allan on February 5, 2009
at 7:44 pm

Right you are, Ken. We will definitely need the wisdom of the crowds to solve this one!

By: Britt on February 5, 2009
at 9:18 pm

It is interesting to discover that you can not only share information, but create and share your ideas with other teachers. I would like to know about this process for learning languages, since one of the speakers is talking about learning French and the way she organized the two courses she was orientating.

By: Luz Arias on February 6, 2009
at 3:10 pm

It was an interesting presentation which highlighted how web2.0 is and can be used by other educators at the different levels. I was particularly pleased with Prof. Murphy-Judy’s use in her language class. I am excited about using any tool to bring praticality to my language class. Unlike some teachers who admire the idea of web 2.o tools in teaching, but fear attempting to learn or use them , I am willing to exted myself to learning and being open to learning from my students how to improve my skills and put their ideas to work.

By: Tricia Brooks on February 7, 2009
at 2:49 pm

From a student´s perspective, in my case, one who finds it hard to conform to traditional teaching methods… I found this to be an excellent introduction to some of the challenges involved in overhauling the educational system/model. I wrote a more extensive reaction on my site and would really appreciate you taking some time out to read it, although I imagine you may not get to it… I will keep following you´re post however, because they have greatly accelerated the pace at which I keep up with “current events” in topics relating to education in the 21st century… thanks.

By: jean-baptiste vervaeck on February 21, 2009
at 2:36 am