Perfect E-Storm

Image accessed 3/31/12  from Dreamstime.com

The year 2004 marked a time in our nation when online learning had gained momentum and wasn't going anywhere except full speed ahead. Dr. Curtis J. Bonk described factors taking place in higher education to create a Perfect Storm, in this case a perfect E-storm, and he goes on to describe 30 of the top technologies that he believed would impact the direction and course of the storm. The storm is actually composed of 4 separate storms (Bonk, page 2):

1) Emerging Technology: dozens of innovative learning technologies to cloud the online learning landscape.

2) Enormous Learner Demand: thousands of learners enrolling in online courses at many universities around the globe.
3) Enhanced Pedagogy: a plethora of collaborative and interactive techniques to engage online learners in both synchronous and asynchronous environments
4) Erased Pedagogy: extensive cutbacks in budgets for these technologies, learners, and pedagogical ideas

All four of these storms seem to impact education today as it did in 2004. Interestingly, we can look back over the past 8 years and see which technologies have made it to the "eye of the storm". Here are a few that stand out to me:

1. Blogs: clearly blogs are being used as a means of assessment. This blog you are reading is a requirement for a course. The blog acts as a reflective journal that students write in each week. Various free blogs include: blogger.com through Google (you're looking at it); Wordpress.com; Edublogs; Our Story, Live Journal. To find out the difference between a Wiki and a Blog go here and click the "Wiki vs. Blog link.

2. Collaborative and Work Team Support Tools: There are so many Web 2.0 technologies for collaborative/group work: Wiggio, Ning, Glogster, Voicethread, and Delicious.

3. iPads, iPods, and Mobile Devices: How students access learning resources and lectures is moving to mobile devices (e.g. podcasts on iPod, using a portable iPad or smartphone to access course materials, using SMS to get alerts). Additional there are many apps for these devices that can be used to for assessment or learning activities.
4. Electronic Books: With Nook, Kindle, and apps for iPad and other tablets, there are many ways to access E-books. Even libraries are carrying books for these devices so you don't have to physically go to the library and check it out. Now you can access them on your device.
5. Digital Portfolios, or E-Portfolios, are an important means of assessment because it is a collection of a student's work from which instructors (and future employers) can gain insight into learner  progress, self-awareness, strengths, risk taking. Some E-portfolio hosting sites are: Taskstream, Wikispaces. Also here is a collection of E-Portfolio resources from UW-Stout.
6. Learning Management Systems: Some common LMSs used in higher education are BlackBoard, Vista, D2L, E-College, Angel, and more.They are great for hosting student coursework and providing a place for teachers to manage grades, access to materials, discussions, etc. There are high costs associated with purchasing LMS's for higher ed institutions, however.  Some of the open access ones like Moodle and Canvas may provide a way to combat high costs.

Bonk, Curtis J. (2004). The Perfect E-Storm: emerging technology, enormous learner demand, enhanced pedagogy, and erased budgets. The Observatory on borderless higher education. pp 1-33.

Week 1: Learner-Centered Environments thrive with Formative Assessment

Assessment should be used to help learning in the here and now: One major take away message is that assessments are most useful when used in a learner-centered fashion rather than being teacher-centered. Assessments should target what a student has learned,  has not learned, and where s/he is having difficulty (Gipps & Murphy, 1994, p. 260). And it must go one step further and include the process of the student working toward learning whatever s/he is struggling with, whether through help of the teacher, other students, or his/her own self-directed efforts. 

In contrast, assessments are not useful to the learning process if they are set outside the learning timeline in a teacher-centered fashion. Suppose the teacher has talked and taught all semester long with the only assessment being a final exam that caps off the semester. The scores (and maybe some written comments) come back after classes have ended. That does not help the learner learn. Or after a class ends, students might fill out a survey to rate what was good an not so good about a course. That does not help students learn in the present either. It may only help the teacher improve the course next time. To sum up, assessment is learner-centered if  it makes an impact on current students; if assessment is used to perhaps improve learning next time around, it is doesn't make an impact (on current learners).

Summative vs Formative:  Drawing from the above prose, I consider Formative Assessments to be more useful for learner-centered environments than Summative Assessments. Using formative assessment can help the learner see his/her learning in terms of where s/he is at and where s/he is going. The student can can also understand his/her strengths and weaknesses  in light of the curriculum. Furthermore, it can possibly challenge the student to grapple with new material/ information-maybe it fits or maybe it forces the student to step away from old understandings.

In my own case, for instance, I had pre-existing ideas of what summative and formative evaluations were, but I was a little surprised to find I was slightly off base. I used to believe that assessment was defined by its content (e.g. an end of chapter quiz is summative; a reflection  is formative). Now I understand that it is not the content of the assessment but rather how the assessment is utilized that determines whether it is formative or summative. Michael Buhagiar (2007, p. 45) says, "classroom assessment is formative only as long as the teacher and students use it that way". So to sum up, formative assessment can be any type of assessment as long as it is used formatively; in a way that helps the student learn and grow as a learner.