Collaboration

Until entering this program through SJSU I have not had great success with collaborative learning assignments in my higher education. I felt like information was regularly jigsawed, but that as a student I was generally not responsible for learning the information other groups created. This program has given me a new perspective on collaborative learning. The difference is the way in which assignments have been designed. An assignment that requires students to critically confer with one another will help them to develop more complete ideas regarding the information they are learning. Students will be able to teach each other while learning themselves. The ideas presented in Understanding by Design seem relevant here (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). An assignment should be created to push students to deeper levels of understanding through the use of ongoing collaborative efforts.

One of the greatest benefits I have found through this blogging assignment was the motivation caused by the pressure of knowing that my peers would be commenting on my discussion. I found that I would think about each topic question a few different times through each cycle. I enjoyed reflecting on the ideas from a number of different perspectives and found myself looking forward to reading what each of you had written. Your comments have been insightful and I am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to have worked with you. This experience has helped me in the development of a new perspective regarding collaboration in education. While I may still drag my feet over the completion of an assignment, once it is finished, I find myself flipping back to the blog-- in anticipation of your responses.

That does not mean, however that a badly designed assignment will become any better just because students are working on it together. It just means that the students will get together and talk about how poorly designed the assignment was. Collaboration is an important aspect to learning, but in one sense collaboration is much like technology-- it is a tool that has become effective in learning, but simply using that tool does not necessitate that true understanding occurs.

Teachers rely heavily on collaborative efforts to best meet the educational needs of their students. At my schools this takes place in a number of ways. Most teachers share resources, ideas, lesson plans--as well as students since they are divided into ability groups for ELD time. They also meet weekly within grade levels to share ideas and discuss challenges and strategies to handle those. It seems as if teaching and collaboration are, at the elementary school level, intricately tied together. The challenge is learning to teach students to do the same.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2006) Understanding by design. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.

Online Learning

Taking online courses is a significantly different experience that face to face learning in a number of ways. Take, for example, the fact that I have been in the program here at SJSU for three years, and have still never been to the campus. A university campus contains a wealth of resources that students are able to take advantage of, which online students often cannot. During my undergraduate experience, I liked going to the gym, joining intramural sports teams, or watching performances. The educational experience becomes central to a student's life. An online education is designed so that students are able to continue the course of their lives while obtaining an education. For this reason, I would hypothesize that the majority of online students are there to take their education seriously. Nonetheless, it seems as if there is a large part of the educational experience that is lacking. To me, that would be the submersive environment of traditional higher education.

One of the main challenges to an online education is the high level of self-responsibility that accompanies student learning. Students who are unable to be motivated self-starters will be unable to succeed in this type of environment. Perhaps this is one of the skills that online learning fosters, but more likely, those students are are not self-starters will not be able to obtain an online education.

The online education I am receiving is more collaboratively based than any classes I have ever taken. Is this the nature of online learning, or is it merely the current educational practice? I'm not sure. What has gone along with this, is a plethora of collaboratively created online content. The nature of collaboration evolves in the face of virtual education. As we are working with online documents, wikis, blogs, etc., we have to learn to become used to publishing unfinished work so that others are able to collaborate on that project. It is frightening to publish work that you know is unfinished. It has been challenging learning to let go of the insecurity regarding that experience. An interesting byproduct of that concept is the evolution in my personal idea of what constituted completed work. In the past, once a paper was printed out, it was finished forever. Now, using collaborative online tools, I find myself rethinking choices and reflecting on ways that my projects can be revisited and reworked. Assignments that have been published online can be drawn from and expanded upon to find new life. For example, I have begun sharing my tween book blog with students as an opportunity to teach them to write their own book reviews.

Ultimately, each teacher is different and each class is a unique experience. Online students, like students who attend physical classes, must learn the distinct style of their professors.
"Students must repeat the acclimation process for each Web-based course at the beginning of a semester" (Orellana, Hudgins, & Simonson, 2009, p. 354). As we are unable to see the people around us, this acclimation process makes the beginning of each semester a slightly uncomfortable process.

Orellana, A., Hudgins, T., & Simonson, M. (2009). The perfect online course. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, Inc.

Assessment

Assessment guides learning in a variety of ways. Education is increasingly being lead by data that is collected through examination. It is agreed that we need to check that our students are learning, but assessment can guide our understanding of how, not only our students are performing, but also our teachers, schools, and curriculum.

Student achievement on standardized tests guides so much of education. While I agree that it is important to ensure that all students are receiving a solid education, I sometimes feel that authentic learning gets hindered when teachers are forced to teach to the test. This test will tell us, not only how individual students progress from year to year, but also how they are doing compared to other students. Standardized tests scores compare how well students have achieved in each class, school, neighborhood, and city across the country. Some lawmakers even want to create a formula that correlates student achievement on standardized tests with the salaries of teachers.

Assessment is typically considered as a tool to assess student learning. It is the method to determine how well the students are doing their job.
Teachers are trying to inspire student learning, and they must evaluate their students' comprehension. If none of the students learned the material, then the teacher obviously had not been successful with this lesson. In this way, assessment is also a tool to determine how well teachers are doing their jobs. Assessment can guide teachers to reflect upon the strengths and weaknesses of their lessons and tailor them to obtain greater success in the future. They will also be aware of the gaps in student knowledge, and have a deeper understanding for what the students need additional assistance with.
Ultimately, the purpose of evaluation is so that we are able to think metacognitively about our educational practices. In order to discuss understanding, assessment provides us with vocabulary to use in the conversation.

Understanding by Design (2006) discusses the creation of rubrics to guide assessment. The details in the rubric provide learners with a clear understanding of that which is expected of them. Educators must carefully consider the desired student learning outcomes and determine what characteristics would demonstrate said learning. Two questions guide users in the evaluation of a rubric:
"Could the proposed criteria be met but the performer still not demonstrate deep understanding?
Could the proposed criteria not be met but the performer nonetheless still show understanding" (Understanding by Design, 2006, p. 188)? These questions force educators to examine, not only how well the students are achieving, but also the validity of the assessment itself.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2006) Understanding by design. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.