SharePoint or myWPI?

Researcher or Editor?

Project Manager or Writer?

WPI Project teams make a host of decisions behind-the-scenes of their actual project work, deciding how to organize roles within their group, and which tools will be best for their needs.  Should we have a calendar to keep track of our tasks?  Should we save each version of our paper?  Is it okay for me to edit my teammate’s work or will that person then feel slighted?

From the faculty perspective, these decisions often display themselves in a myriad of ways.  For example, it may become clear that a team cooperated (divided up the tasks fairly) but didn’t collaborate (no one team member can speak about the other’s work at all).  There may be the challenge of identifying accountability for successes or failures.  Or perhaps deciding the role that self and peer assessment should have within the grading process.

Please consider joining us for an upcoming conversation about these challenges and more on Thursday, June 6th in Norwood, MA.

NERCOMP will be hosting a day long workshop featuring Professor Lauren Mathews (WPI, Biology and Biotechnology) and Professor Karen Kurault (University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Writing) discussing their own work in this area and examining the impact on student learning objectives, conflict resolution and collaboration in general.

See a detailed agenda and register here:  http://nercomp.org/index.php?section=events&evtid=227

The three types of questions were defined by Elder and Paul as:

• One System questions:  These are questions that have a discrete answer.  While they may require reasoning and evidence it is only from within one system and they can be answered by a factual knowledge answer. e.g.  sum, what is the size of x, what is the population of the US? One System questions in general are poor discussion questions as the discrete answer does not allow for multiple voices to enter the conversation without redundancy.

• No System questions: No system questions are those that cannot by nature have a discrete answer as they ask us to state and opinion or preference. e.g. are pancakes better than waffles? who do you think should win the next election? No System questions form fair discussion question because it allows multiple voices to enter the conversation.  However, you cannot argue against one persons’ preference so there may also be an element of personal subjectivity that makes these questions hard to assess.

• Multi-system (sometimes called Conflicting System) questions:  Multi-system questions require reasoning and  evidence based evaluation of options across more than one system.  While these questions may have “better” or “worse” answers (due to the levels or reasoning and evidence used to support the answer), they do not have a discrete answers.  Many voices can contribute to the conversation and interact with each other as an answer is sought.  Multi-system questions are  good discussion questions as they ask students to reason and engage in civil discourse around a topic.

So all this taken together, the more systems you have in a question the better it is for discussion.  So how can you easily rank your questions?  Fennema and Manning presented the following checklist (with a few modifications)

Checklist for effective discussion questions

You can use this table to evaluate each of your discussion questions.  The larger the number of Yes’ you select the better your question is for generating discussion.  A quick word of warning, if you select unclear for any of your questions you may wish to rethink the wording of that question; if you are unclear the students will be as well!

I hope you find as much use out of this as I did, let us know by leaving a comment below!

Speaking of acquisitions…  in late fall, Echo360 also acquired LectureTools.  LectureTools allows instructors to synchronously share their lectures with students along with the ability to ask polling questions or conduct text-based (from the student) Q&A.   While viewing the synchronous material, students can take their own private notes within the application that are saved to their computer/device.  At the end of the lecture, the captured material – along with all the interactivity - is available for playback via the link in myWPI or RSS feed (depending on how faculty choose to publish their recordings).   Any personal notes that students have taken on the material are synced up to display with the content during playback.

WPI faculty have rolled out some of Echo’s new synchronous features and we will be exploring ways in which we might be able to take advantage of some of the LectureTools and ThinkBinder features in the future.   Our biggest concern right now with synchronous teaching and learning tools is wireless bandwidth, especially within larger classrooms where the wireless access points (WAPs) can only handle a certain number of wireless device connections.  (Think cell phones, tablets, laptops – students often have many wireless devices connected at once!)   Also note that this is not a WPI-specific problem as we are using the latest-and-greatest wireless technologies – other universities also have this challenge!

If you are interested in exploring how you might use Echo360 lecture capturing, LectureTools, or ThinkBinder in your own teaching, learning and/or research, please reach out to us and let us know at atc-ttl@wpi.edu!  We’re always happy to explore new, exciting, and engaging teaching and learning technologies!

Each professor has slightly different needs, however all centered around the desire for students in a group to give feedback on their group members.  Some are interested in qualitative feedback.  Others want a more quantitative method, which would allow group members to divide up the “percentage of effort” among the team.  We are looking forward to more discussions on this latter topic, especially as we role out a new method later this summer.  But in the meantime, because WPI is project-based and their are 12 days of classes left in the term (12 DAYS?!?!), we thought that this “work around” for group feedback in myWPI might be useful.

The myWPI Self and Peer Assessment tool is designed for students to give feedback on other individuals’ work.  So let me please be clear that the methods described below to use the tool merely for comment gathering is very much gaming the system.  However, we think it works!

Using myWPI’s Self and Peer Assessment Tool to Gather Feedback on Group Collaboration

Step 1:  If you haven’t done so already, use the Users and Groups tool to create a Group Set, then enroll all of your students in their correct groups.  This will save a lot of time later.

Step 2:  Navigate to the Content Area in which you would like to deploy the Assessment.  Click Assessments –> Self and Peer Assessment.

Step 3:  Fill out the relevant information about the Assessment.  In the Instructions text box, we suggest that you ask students to write their own name.

Your students will be required to take action during the Submission Date range, so maybe give them a day or two on that calendar.  However, most of the work will take place during the Evaluation Date range, which can only begin after the Submission Date range is complete.

The next settings are completely up to you.  If you want to know who said what, do not allow anonymous evaluation.  If you do not need the student to evaluate him/herself, you can also disable Allow Self Evaluation.  Finally, you can choose whether to display the comments to the students.

In the Number of Submissions to Evaluate, be sure you list the number of students in the group.  When in doubt, go with the highest number.

Choose the availability settings and you’re ready for Step 4!

Step 4:  Create a Question.

In the Question Information section, instruct the students to write their full name.  You do not need to enter a Model Response.

Click Submit.

Mouse over Question 1, click the action link for the drop down menu, and click Criteria.

Click Create Criteria.

Enter instructions to the students who will be evaluating and choose the settings that are important to you.  For example, you may not be interested in numeric feedback.  If that’s the case, you can set the Points Possible to 0.  However, if you want the students to comment verbally, be sure to enable the Allow Feedback to User option.  Whether the student being evaluated can see these comments is actually a setting you chose in Step 3 above.

Step 5.  Make copies of the Assessment – each group will need one.  Click the Action link on the Assessment title –> Copy.

Once you have enough copies of the Self and Peer Assessment for each group, you can change the settings for each copy. Click the Action link on the Assessment title –> Adaptive Release (Advanced).

Click Create Rule

The Rule name will default to Rule 1 – you can leave that and click Submit.  On the next screen, click Create Criteria –> Membership.

Move one Group (remember in Step 1 when you create Groups?) from the left column to the right.

Repeat this for all copies of the Assessment – each Group will need their own copy.  This ensures that students are only evaluating their own group members.

Step 6:  Let your students know that you are ready to go!

During the Submission Date Range, each student will need to go in and submit their name.

During the Evaluation Date Range, the students can go in to the same course item and evaluate their group members.

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.  We’d also love to hear how it goes if you give this method a try!

With the first set of Google’s shiny new specs being sent out to the handful of lucky applicants, it’s only a matter of time before students and instructors end up with a pair over their eyes in a class.  And while it’s tempting to label the lenses as just another distraction akin to smartphones, there might be some real use out there for these things, as well as some real risks.  Let’s brainstorm!

• First-person lecture-capturing is the first thing that comes to my mind.  An instructor could show students an experience first-hand—imagine watching a pre-lab instructional video from the point of view of an expert, or the feeling of being right in the middle of an intense discussion.  Of course, there’s always the risk of students using Glass to record lectures when they shouldn’t, but at least they’ll have to announce their intentions via voice-command to do so!
• Speaking of labs, why not strap on a  ”Safety Glass” for easy recording?  Students using wearable computers could easily record and share data and reactions.  The best part, however?  Being able to record without pressing a button or holding up a camera!
• For those of us with poor memory, Glass has the potential to bring up notes while maintaining eye contact.  Some may find it distracting to have text hovering at the corner of your vision—other instructors could see some real use in having notes delegated to the corner of their eye rather than having Powerpoint or written notes.
•  Glass can add a new element to distance learning—much like the lecture capture concept above, Glass’s live video chat feature allows an instructor to give a lecture from anywhere.  Need to write out something?  Just grab a piece of paper!

I think it goes without saying that the technology isn’t a boon for every instructor and student, and I shudder to think of the effects of a Glass video on someone with motion sickness.  However, it’s certainly not something to ignore.  What creative things can you imagine doing with a computerized pair of glasses?

Learn about Google Glass here: http://www.google.com/glass/start/

4: a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests 

To celebrate Pi Day, we’ve rolled out a new Blackboard feature: Inline Assignment Grading!   What does this have to do with Pi?   Absolutely nothing.   But hey, I had to acknowledge the day somehow, right?

Inline Grading is an improvement (we think) to how instructors can view and provide feedback to student submissions that were made through the Assignment Manager tool.   The old way required instructors to download student submissions and feedback was provided in the native application (e.g. Microsoft Word’s commenting features, PDF drawing tools, etc.).   The graded commenting/feedback then had to be uploaded back through the Grade Center so that the student could view it.   The new and improved method allows the instructor (or TA or grader) to provide this feedback directly in the browser window without needing to save a local copy first!

Feedback options include a commenting tool, highlighter, text selection tool, strikeout tool, and… wait for it… a drawing tool!   That’s right, if you have a stylus (digital pen), you can annotate the document and your drawings will be preserved within the document!   Once you have saved your feedback, your options for downloading include the original submission attachment as well as the marked up version, saved in PDF format.   (These are the same options the student has, by the way.)

Do I need to install additional plugins to my browser?  
Nope!  The feature is supported on current (read: non-beta) versions of Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

What file types are supported?
Supported submission types are Word (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), and PDF.   If a student submits an attachment through the Assignment Manager that is not in one of these formats, you will have to download the submission and view it using the native application.

Can I use the mobile browser on my iPad to provide annotated feedback?
As of right now, our testing shows that this isn’t supported yet.   However, we’ve already provided feedback to Blackboard about this so hopefully that feature will be forthcoming!  When it happens, we will be sure to update this post!

I already have assignment manager items posted in my course site.  Will I need to remove them and re-add them in order to take advantage of this feature?
Nope!   Assignment Manager items will automatically be converted so you will see the inline grading features in any new and pre-existing submissions!

The new Inline Assignment Grading feature screenshot

For more information on the new inline grading features, check out the official Blackboard Release Notes!

1.  Our amazing Interactive Media and Game Development courses.  I wish I knew more about what you do, but everything I see is beautiful!

2.  Writing in Class

The process of working through a problem or equation cannot be demonstrated by static text on a PowerPoint slide.  Many folks like to use the chalk board.  For years here at WPI, we have also had SMART Podiums (formerly Sympodiums) in our electronic classrooms. These nifty tools allow you to make your monitor an electronic whiteboard.  In fact today, a faculty member was describing to me the way his students shifted forward in their seats when he used a red line to make a connection between two numbers.  So simple to engage!  We are now in the process of introducing Wacoms into the newer e-Classrooms, which function a bit differently.

• They don’t have the handy pen selection buttons on the top, so my talented colleague Jim Monaco has programmed a pen menu into the button.  Hit that rocker on the pen and you should see it appear.
• Wacoms do not have the “SMART overlay”, which means you can only use the pen tools that are built into specific programs.  Microsoft has assisted by building them into all of their products.  We also have a GREAT program for annotating PDF’s (or just writing on blank PDFs) called PDF Annotator.  I’d recommend you use it instead of Adobe Acrobat because the pen tools are so much better.

We have also noticed the use of more personal tablets in the classroom!  Be you iPad, Windows, or Android, there are always options.  If you have an adapter, you can project by plugging your tablet into the VGA or HDMI cable in your classroom.  (Please note, on the iPad 1, only selected apps will display.)  What are some of our faculty’s favorite apps for writing in class?

• Airsketch:  Air Sketch provides the user with a wireless remote white board. The possibilities are endless; use it to mark up PDF files, solve out equations, or hand to students to have them diagram a process!  You can open an HTML-5-enabled browser on the classroom machine and project the URL for your whiteboard into the classroom.
• UPad and UPad Lite:  Use your finger or stylus to write as you would on the old-fashioned kind. Export to a pdf to share with your students, or archive for future use.
• Bamboo Paper:  Available for iOS and Android, this relatively new app has a great writing interface.  Which isn’t surprising, given the manufacturer.

3.  Grading work

If you have a tablet at your disposal, you may be interested in using that digital pen to mark up your students’ work.  If you are able to connect to a PC, I recommend PDF Annotator (See Above).  If you are working on an iPad, I am in love with iAnnotate PDF.   It is worth the cost for one feature alone – you can flip pages without saving the annotations on each page.  At least one faculty member (you know who you are) mentions the importance of that feature to me on a regular basis.

Are you doing interesting things with Pen Based Technology?  If so, I have two suggestions.

1.  Comment below!  We’d love to hear about it!

2.  Consider getting involved with the Workshop on the Impact of Pen & Touch Technology in Education (aka “WIPTE”).  They produce a monograph after every annual conference which is most definitely worth checking out.

So technical mumbo-jumbo aside, can I still copy and paste text into the new VTBE?  
YES!

Safely and securely?
YES!

How?   

You have three options:
1) use your browser’s Edit menu to cut/copy/paste text
2) use keyboard shortcuts (Control+C = copy, Control+V = paste on a PC; Command+C = copy, Command+V = paste on a Mac).
3) use the VTBE cut/copy/paste commands (see below)

the new VTBE in Blackboard

Want to learn more about the VTBE?   Visit this page:  http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/HowTo/MyWPI/Bb9/textoptions.html

So now comes the really hard, ask yourself in the mirror question:  Does your final exam reflect the learning objectives that you set for your course?  If not, you’re not alone.

It's the FINAL countdown!

Here at WPI, “alternative assessment” is being explored in a number of different ways.  I use quotes because I’m not using the phrase in it’s truest sense, but really just to mean “assessment that isn’t a midterm or final exam.”  Here are just a few conversations I’ve heard on campus and off in the past few months.  Named are withheld to protect the innocent, but if you see yourself here, comment below and I’ll edit the post!

There are tools to help with grading

1.  Daily (or almost daily) quizzes: on paper, online (e.g. myWPI), or with clickers.  These quizzes are typically short, and reflect the content the students are responsible for that week.  Instructors are using the quizzes to gauge the topics for the next lecture, how much of the reading students are actually completing, and how they are progressing through the subject content.  These are probably the most popular example of low-stakes assessment.

Assessments can test more than rote recall

2.  Weekly essays:  Quizzes that are given online or with clickers can remove some of the grading burden from the faculty member.  Some instructors find that using this opportunity to assign students work that is a little higher on the Bloom’s taxonomy pyramid can be feasible and effective.

Is there room for social media in the classroom?

3.  Social media:  One faculty member told me that her students needed to post about a topic on Facebook and report back on the ensuing conversation that happened within the student’s own social circle.  Another asks students to Tweet about the week’s readings – with very specific requirements and parameters.  It’s sort of like opening your course discussion board up to the big, wide world.  If you’re interested in trying this, let me know!  We have some tips to share!

Record your screen, webcam and voice with Echo360

4.  Final presentation:  Okay, I know this is not a new idea.  Final presentations are great because they force a student to synthesize knowledge, present it coherently, and maybe even reflect.  However, one complaint that I hear often is that final presentations take up too much class time.  One alternative might be to ask your students to record their presentations.  By using the Echo360 Personal Capture system, students can record their screen, voice and webcam if you’d like.  They can upload the video directly to your myWPI site, though this does require some setup.  Contact us if you’re interested!

Peer assessment can be great when done right!

5.  Peer assessment:  Many folks work with a summative peer feedback process because it is so integral to our curriculum.  Others also have found a formative peer feedback process to be a great tool!  It helps both the assessed and the assessor, because students are forced to reflect on the assignment criteria and apply it to their own work as well.  A friend of mine suggested the EBI rule: e.g. “This work shows a clear understanding of the concept.  It would be Even Better If you applied the equation to a new situation.”  A reminder that feedback should help the person take action to improve – the benefit of getting feedback before you’re done!  (Thanks, N!)

What other strategies are you finding work for you?