Module III Principles of Distance Education

In this module, you watched two video programs in which George Siemens discussed strategies for assessing collaborative learning communities in the online environment, and for creating and maintaining successful online learning communities. Both instructors and learners must take responsibility for achieving this goal. Occasionally, you may run across a student who does not like to work in groups or collaborate with peers. He or she may even request to work on a project alone rather than in a cooperative group.

When impending assessments of participation within a collaborative learning community, George Siemans states, one of the most significant challenges is finding the correct tools of assessment.  He gives definition to collaboration and teamwork in curricular activities, calling it participative pedagogy.  With that being said, one must give notice to the differences in assessing individuals for mastering skills learned in the traditional learning environment and then shifting to assessing groups of individuals collaborating in an environment of connected through cyberspace.  Question then becomes how should participation in a collaborative learning community be assessed?  Students can assess their peers, as well as, self assessment.  Additional assessments can be seen in online communities, such as blogs and wiki sites.  One must be cognitive of student’s individual contributions; this is a critical part of the assessment process. The contributions of the individual are a critical determining factor of weight given to the individual’s assessment. The varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course affect the instructor’s "fair and equitable assessment" of learning. Instructors must become aware of what skills are being implemented in a project and by whom.  It is also important to determine what the necessary skills are and how these skills impact the project.  Weight than can be given to this based on the importance of the skills contributed.

If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, the other members have no choice but to proceed forward and achieve the objectives of the course.  The role of the instructor is to confer with the student and discuss whether or not the working independently was/is an option and what are the ramifications regarding the individuals’ assessment for choosing to work independently (Palloff and Pratt, 2005).


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