Assessing Collaborative Efforts

Module 3 Blog Post

            Effective strategies for creating, maintaining, and assessing collaborative online learning communities are the responsibility of both the instructor and the learners.  Participation in a collaborative learning community should be assessed fairly, equitably, based on contributions, and stated outcome metrics by the instructor and peers who provide feedback from within the community (Laureate, 2012).  The varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course should not affect the instructor's "fair and equitable assessment" (2012) of learning because a learner-centered online classroom environment is the same as a face-to-face classroom (Palloff and Pratt, 2005) where as long the outcomes are met, the pathway to success will look different for every student.
            If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, the other members of the learning community should encourage the student by modeling “social presence” (Palloff and Pratt, 2007, p. 31) by acknowledging each other’s thoughts and feelings.  The instructor’s role in this situation is to support the open collaboration of students by clarifying the objectives and tasks, and defining clear expectations (Marcinek, 2011) that would reflect the impact of nonparticipation or collaboration on the assessment plan criteria as established in the course rubric.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer).  (2012).  Assessment of Collaborative Learning.  Baltimore, MD:  Author, George Siemens.

Marcinek, A. (2011).  Importance of Collaborative Assessment in a 21st Century Classroom.  Andrew Marcinek’s Blog at Edutopia.  Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/collaborative-assessment-digital-classroom-social-media-tools

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.