Assessing Collaborative Efforts

The quest to determine how collaborative participation should be assessed lies first in defining the role of participation.  The educator must first establish the criteria of how each individual should contribute to the task.  This information must then be shared in detail with the students.  Secondly, the educator must determine an evaluative mechanism based on the established criteria (Marcinek, 2011).  The educator must ensure that their assessment provides attainable tasks for a variety of leveled learners.  Therefore, the assessments should be created in a variety of forms both traditional and authentic.  To begin understanding how this can be created, educators must holistically understand their students.  This can be determined through obtaining students learning patterns, attitudes toward learning, current skill level, interests, and so forth.  

When entertaining the element of fair and direct as described by Siemens (2008) in regards to assessment, the educator should be assessing the student’s ability to communicate within a group setting.  Whether the individual maintains a massive amount of knowledge or little knowledge of the concept at the beginning of instruction has no regard to their ability of working collaboratively.  Assessment should be observed at the beginning, middle, and end of each task, allowing each individual an appropriate amount to time to formulate knowledge, opinions, philosophies, etc. of the concept.  Therefore, the ability of the educator in establishing participation lies in the student’s ability to effectively contribute to the learning population.  Consequently the capability of an educator to provide fair and equitable assessments directly link to offering sufficient time.  

The instructor as well as the students play the role of facilitator in an online learning environment.  However, the instructor is in responsible for outlining expectations, providing support, and giving consistent feedback on all learning applications.  If a student does not initially engage in the collaborative process, the group members can probe them through direct questioning.  If there is still resistance the group members must attempt to make them understand that the learning environment is one that is welcoming and free of bias and criticism.  When the group members have no other resort, the instructor should be notified, in which they should then stress the importance of why collaboration is important and its role in the course.  This should not affect the assessment plan created by the instructor, since the criteria of the course had been defined in its initial stage.  

In all, assessments are tools used to measure particular criteria.  The measurement must be undoubtedly defined, attainable, have rationale, and created to suit a variety of leveled learners.  When applied effectively, this tool can enhance the learning capabilities of every learner.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008). Distance Education: Assessment of Collaborative Learning [Video]. Baltimore, MD: Author

Marcinek, A., (2011). Importance of Collaborative Assessment in a 21st Century Classroom. Retrieved on July 12, 2011 from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/collaborative-assessment-digital-classroom-social-media-tools

I responded to:

Bianca Lochner ~ http://lochneruni.blogspot.com/2011/07/educ-8842-module-3_13.html?showComment=1310782062457#c3551666050486408722

Patrick LaPollo ~ http://educ7102.wordpress.com/module-3/#comment-16