Real Time Assessment in Online Classes

As a Distance and Instructional Services Librarian, I teach students both online and face to face.  For my online classes, I usually have about 45 minutes to give a PowerPoint presentation through Blackboard Elluminate.  It’s a lot of information to cover in a short amount of time, so I often feel like I am trying to cram in as much information as possible which doesn’t often lead to the best learning environment.

I’m also a firm believer in the idea that I am not really teaching if no one is learning.  As a grade school teacher, I would give weekly quizzes aligned to the standards and objectives I taught that week.  Students would graph their mastery of each standard to track their process, and I would know if I needed to reteach something I had covered. 

In the way I’m currently teaching my online classes, I’ve been struggling with the fact that I have no way of knowing if the students are learning.  I ask them to use the smiley face emoticon periodically to make sure that they are engaged and understanding the content, but if a student overestimates his or her ability or is too shy to ask a question, I won’t know. The students also take a standard survey after the class, but it is focused more on their perception of the class rather than their understanding of the material.

I wasn’t sure how to integrate assessment of student learning into an online class, so I was very excited to read Shannon R. Simpson’s article “Google Spreadsheets and real-time assessment: Instant feedback for library instruction” in the October issue of College & Research Library News.  I’ve linked to the article, as I definitely recommend reading it.  If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, Simpson explains how she is able to receive instant feedback about her students’ understanding of what she is teaching.  For example, after demonstrating a search strategy she has students recreate her strategy for their own topic and record the search results in a Google Spreadsheet.  She includes a very helpful example spreadsheet in her article.  Based on the example Simpson included in the article, I've started brainstorming which categories I might want to include in my own spreadsheet.  I will most likely have to cut down the number of columns, but as I am just brainstorming for now I'm including quite a few.  You are welcome to view and make comments on the spread sheet here.

As Simpson mentions in her article, one of the best outcomes of using this method is receiving feedback in real time. This is most likely the only time I will work with a student, so it’s important that I address any misconceptions right away.  By viewing the Google Spreadsheet as students are filling it out, I hope that I will be able to identify any breakdowns in understanding and clarify as needed.

Another benefit of having the students fill out a Google Spreadsheet is that it can be used as a part of active learning.  I’ve also been struggling with ways I can integrate active learning into online classes, so  I’m hoping that the Google Spreadsheet will offer a way to monitor and guide the students during active learning time, even when I’m not there physically. Additionally, the students will hopefully have an end product from the class which they can refer back to and use for their project.

I’m very excited to try real time assessment in the coming semester.  My biggest concern is timing.  I believe I will need to streamline my presentation or get creative about the way I explain things in order to make sure the students have enough time to search for a source and enter it in the spreadsheet.

I will update you all on how it goes next semester.  Has anyone tried using this method for receiving instant feedback in a class?

Creating an Internal Knowledge Base

After watching a Webinar hosted by Ellyssa Kroski, blogger at iLibrarian, I was inspired to set up an example knowledge base for my department.  I was intrigued by the way wikis could be used for project management and the sharing of information. My department is moving towards more collaboration, but we don't currently have a centralized way to disseminate and share information for departmental and group projects.

In this Webinar, Ellyssa mentioned several wiki platforms and demonstrated PBworks. I am not personally a fan of the PBworks layout, so I decided to take a look at some of the other platforms. I looked into Wet Paint, but the parent company seems to have changed into a gossip Web site. I liked PmWiki (the library I worked at in grad school used that platform), but as far as I could tell the platform needed to be uploaded to the library server.  At this point, I just wanted to create an example wiki, so I wasn't ready to ask our systems department to add a wiki platform.

In the end I settled on Google Sites, as I could easily create something and have it hosted for free. I chose a simple template with a left navigation bar (I prefer clean simple Web sites) and customized the background photo. I thought about what I wanted included in the wiki and how to organize information into a small number of categories. For my top level of categories, I chose Courses, Projects, Resources, and Training.

Under the Courses heading, I listed all of the departments that we provide instruction for, with the idea that each instruction librarian could include a short summary of the instruction he or she provides for that department. I didn't want the information to be a repeat of what we already have on our Web site or in our LibGuides, but rather a centralization and summarization so that information can easily be found in one place. For example, I summarized which classes I provide instruction for and included a link to our SACs LibGuide that provides a more detailed account of what I do semester by semester as well as links to course LibGuides which include PowerPoints and materials.

Under the Projects heading, I created pages for department, shared, and individual projects.  On these pages, we can update our progress on our projects and also see what others are working on in order to collaborate and share ideas if we are working on similar projects. There's also an ability to add comments, which I found useful. I saw that the PRIMO site of the month focuses on Endnote, so I added the link as a comment on our Endnote Update project page, so I would remember and so that my coworker could see the link too.

Under the Resources heading, so far I've included links for interesting articles and travel tips. My coworkers often e-mail interesting articles, but I find that they get lost in my e-mail if I don't add them to Endnote or another program. I thought that if someone had an article to share with the department, he or she could add a link to it on the wiki. I'm currently categorizing the articles by subject, but I imagine this could become cumbersome if many articles are added. I included travel tips as my department travels to satellite locations to teach. Right now, this page contains tips like when teaching in Seoul, you can take the KAL Limousine bus from Incheon Airport into the city.  Finally, I included a training page in case we want to move our training materials online.

Overall, I felt that Google sites was easy to use and somewhat customizable. One thing I didn't like, however, is that each page did not immediately include a "last updated" time.  While you can add a recent activity link to your site's side bar, you must manually type in when the page was last updated .

What do you all think? Have you set up wikis/knowledge bases for your library or your self? Which platform did you use? What kind of categories did you use to divide your information?