Instructional Design Essentials (IDE) Blog Post Week 2

PART 1- Procedures for Educative Assessment

1.      Forward-Looking Assessment - Formulate one or two ideas for forward-looking assessment.  Identify a situation in which students are likely to use what they have learned, and try to replicate that situation with a question, problem, or issue.

I might give students a scenario similar to the following – You need to write an argumentative paper on offshore drilling.  Formulate a search using keywords to use in a library database that will give you credible and reliable results.  

2.      Criteria and Standards – Select one of your main learning goals, and identify at least two criteria that would distinguish exceptional achievement from poor performance.  Then write two or three levels of standards for each of these criteria.

One of my main learning goals from last week’s exercise was for students to be able to determine if an article is a credible and scholarly source that can be used for an assignment.  I might set up criteria rubric similar to the chart below:

Criteria	Exceptional	Average	Poor
Can the student identify a good source and articulate why  the article is a good source?	Identifies a good source and uses elements of the CRAAP method taught to explain why an article is a good source.	Identifies a good article but cannot articulate exactly why it is a good source to use.	Cannot identify a good source to use.
Can the student determine if an article is a scholarly article and explain how they arrived at that conclusion?	Can both determine if an article is scholarly and explain characteristics of scholarly articles that they used to make the determination.	Can distinguish between a scholarly and popular article but cannot articulate reasons.	Cannot identify between a scholarly and popular article.

I would assess this by giving the students articles and having them determine first if it a scholarly article and why they believe it is or is not and then determining if it would be a good source to use and why.  I would give them time to write down their answers.

3.      Self-Assessment – What opportunities can you create for students to engage in self-assessment of their performance?

To use the learning goal mentioned above of determining if an article is scholarly, students could decide if an article is scholarly and then “check their work” by going to  the site from the University of Michigan https://umich.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_4GzxIyQygbfNBU9&Q_JFE=0 .  There are probably other tutorials similar to this as well but this one is short and doable in a one-shot.

4.      “FIDeLity” Feedback – What procedures can you develop that will allow you to give student feedback that is : Frequent, Immediate, Discriminating, and Lovingly delivered

In a one-shot time is always a factor but I do try to always walk around while students are doing assignments, or tutorials and ask how they are doing and look over there answers.  Usually if there is a worksheet I usually have them do it in groups so there is a spokesperson for each group that explains there answers and we have a class discussion about them.  This is frequent (for a one-shot), immediate, and lovingly-delivered, however I am unsure if it is discriminating.  I do try to ask them a lot of “why” questions – “Why did you answer that way?” and “Why do you believe that?”.

PART 2 - Integration

1.      Situational Factors – Assuming you have done a careful, thorough job of reviewing the situational factors, how well are these factors reflected in the decisions you made about learning goals, feedback and assessment, learning activities? What potential conflicts can you identify that may cause problems? Are there any disconnects between your  beliefs and values, the student characteristics, the specific or general context, or the nature of the subject in relation to the way you propose to run the course?

I think that there may indeed be a few conflicts between my learning goals, assessment, and earning activities and one of those is time.  I am not sure I have time to cover all of the goals mentions and to get assessment and feedback on each goal.  Another, which I think was brought up by classmates, is student attention span.  I did not consider this in my original situational factors, however students may not have the attention span to accomplish all I want to accomplish in 75 minutes even if I break each part down into learning objects.  Also, I plan on using tutorials and group work and some students may not like group work and some students are not visual learners.

2.      Learning Goals and Feedback & Assessment – Issues to address include: How well do your assessment procedures address the full range of learning goals? Is the feedback giving students information about all the learning goals? Do the learning goals include helping the students learn how to assess their own performance?

Well in Part 1 of this week’s assignment I only addressed a couple of the learning goals so I will have to come up with some different ( and short) assessments of some of the other learning goals, which I will lay out in the “Worksheet for Designing a Course.”  Again I am reconsidering having all the goals I put forth in week 1.

3.      Learning Goals and Teaching/Learning Activities – Do the learning activities effectively support all your learning goals? Are there extraneous activities that do not serve any major learning goal?

I do believe that the learning activities involved in the class effectively support all of the learning goals.  I haven’t mention all of the activities, but I think having students watch videos on evaluating sources and scholarly articles before class is appropriate and I think having them evaluate articles I give them and then finding articles using their own search strategy and evaluating those articles is important. There could be a short poll while I am wrapping up class that asks about the different ways they can contact a librarian, to integrate both an activity and assessment into the course pertaining to the goal of having the students know how to reach a librarian.  

4.      Teaching/Learning Activities and Feedback & Assessment – How well does the feedback loop work to prepare students for understanding the criteria and standards that will be used to assess their performance? How well do the practice learning activities and the associated feedback opportunities prepare students for the eventual assessment activities?

Since this is a one-shot course I have tried to make the learning activities and the assessment opportunities one and the same.  I don’t know if that is correct but it seems that is a necessity in a one-shot.

Worksheet for Designing a Course

Learning goals for course	Ways of assessing this kind of learning	Actual-teaching learning activities	Helpful resources, people, things
how to access the library catalog and library databases	-Forward-looking scenario type questions- ex. You have an assignment for psychology what would be an appropriate database to use, etc.	-watch a video before hand -“real doing” going to the catalog and the databases	-online videos -online tutorials -Libguide
how to formulate a search in each	- Forward-looking scenario type questions (search in database with keywords) -Self-assessment – did you get good results	- in class brainstorming -“real doing” doing  search -reflective pair-share on how their searching went	- video on brainstorming - video on “ the right number of keywords  https://vimeo.com/12861706
how to determine if a source will be useful and reliable	-Forward-looking scenario described above	-Have students determine if a source is reliable and explain why according to the CRAAP method	-LibGuide -Librarian
how to determine if an article if scholarly	-Forward-looking scenario described above -self-assessment with tutorial	-have students determine if an article is scholarly and explain why -check self with tutorial	-LibGuide -Librarian -Tutorial at https://umich.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_4GzxIyQygbfNBU9&Q_JFE=0
how to get help from a librarian	Self-assessment – poll described above	-Quick poll about contacting a librarian	-LibGuide with poll