Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Enhancing Teaching And Learning Through Design Practice, Lori Lockyer

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Design is part of a teacher’s practice on a daily basis. Teachers are constantly designing and redesigning learning experiences for their students. However, the notions of the teacher as designer or ‘teacher design practice’ are rarely used as frameworks within teacher education or continuing professional learning. In fact, ‘teacher design thinking’, that is, how school teachers think about and engage in design practice has been an under-researched area. Design thinking has the potential to provide teachers with a scaffold to reflect upon contextual and evidence-based factors when designing learning experiences for their students. However, we need to know how teachers …

Creating Artful Thinkers - Transforming Research Into Practice, Onsite To Online Learning, Julie A. Carmean, Sara M. Lesk

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

National Gallery of Art educators Julie Carmean and Sara Lesk propose presenting about their process of transforming research into practice through creating the National Gallery’s first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), specifically for K-12 educators, using the pedagogy of Harvard’s Artful Thinking Routines and the National Gallery’s art collection. This free, international, online learning experience aims to democratize the opportunity for teachers to bring critical thinking through art to their students around the world. Participants will experience a combined onsite/online demonstration of one of their MOOC modules by, first, engaging with a work of art, using an Artful Thinking routine; …

Teaching Languages Online: Innovations And Challenges, Mayu Miyamoto, Natsumi Suzuki, Atsushi Fukada, Yuhan Huang, Siyan Hou, Wei Hong

Purdue Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference

Language professionals long resisted teaching online mainly because it was unthinkable to teach speaking in the online environment. Recent advances in technology, however, have made it conceivable. This chapter presents the design and implementation of online courses in Japanese and Chinese recently developed and being offered at Purdue University. We will highlight not only technologies involved, but also pedagogical innovations that helped resolve difficult issues. The efficacy of online teaching will also be touched upon. Reactions from enrolled students and the instructors that have taught the courses will also be shared.

Cutting Time, Not Corners: Rapid Prototyping In Instructional Design, Joelle Pitts

SIDLIT Conference

Trends in digital teaching and learning combined with the learning preferences of college students result in an ever-increasing need for digital learning objects and experiences. Time, budget, and environmental restraints compound instructional design challenges, resulting in too many projects spread over too few staff members. Rapid Prototyping (RP) is an iterative design process originating from the software engineering sector. Adapted to instructional design, RP allows academics to facilitate the design, development, and assessment of multiple learning objects to maximize resources, while catching problems early in the development stage. Discussion will center on how RP can overcome common instructional design problems. …

Hacking Assessment, Phillip Dawson

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Hackers exploit weaknesses in a system to achieve their own goals. In this paper I argue that hacking presents a significant threat to the growing world of online assessment. This threat needs to be addressed through a variety of means; technological anti-hacking approaches will not be sufficient. The most effective ways to prevent hacking may be changes to the assessment tasks themselves to make hacking less tempting; these approaches also have a range of positive side effects in terms of authenticity, transparency of criteria, and ensuring tasks involve work beyond the exam. I conclude with a brief exploration of the …

Stealth Assessment In Video Games, Val Shute

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Games can be powerful vehicles to support learning, but their success in education hinges on getting the assessment part right. In this presentation, I will explore how games can use stealth assessment to measure and support the learning of competencies critical for the future. I will discuss what stealth assessment is, why it is important, and how to develop and accomplish it. I will also provide examples within the context of a game called Physics Playground that I designed and developed with my team. I’ll share what has been learned by recent research on stealth assessments in games, including: Does …

Assessment In Interactive Learning Environments, Michael Timms, Jason Lodge

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

There is an increasing interest in using digital technologies to create interactive learning environments (ILEs) that both teach and assess student skills that are hard or impossible to assess using ‘static’ items such as traditional, multiple-choice questions. These interactive learning environments try to do two things simultaneously: firstly, to monitor the learning of the student in real time, providing feedback to help the student progress through the learning task; and secondly, to use the information gathered during the learning to make judgements about where the student is in learning of the topic. Essentially, ILEs draw upon the same source of …

Teaching For Diversity And Equity: Scholarship And Practice, Elizabeth Mccormack, Esther Chiang, Jancy Munguia

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

Research has shown that factors such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status can have a significant impact on a student’s ability to complete a college degree. As our classrooms become more culturally and experientially diverse, what can we as faculty do to ensure that all students have the opportunity to succeed? There is a growing body of research that identifies issues that low-income, first-generation, underrepresented minority, and international students face and describes tested strategies for helping students overcome them. Our goal in this workshop is share these findings with faculty and empower them to adapt and integrate relevant strategies into …

Workshop: Enhancing Content For Mixed Skill Classrooms, Lesley Skousen

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

The explosion of online learning has provided many unbelievable new options for reaching students and engaging them on a personal level. However, so many options make responsible lesson-planning a daunting task. This presentation will explore the best practices of using online platforms for both native speakers and an international audience. Dr. Skousen draws from her experience working with international students and seven years of online course design, teaching, and consulting in order to present various lesson plans that engage students personally. In addition to discussing the creation of modules to facilitate different learning styles, there will also be a practical …

Incorporating Online Materials And Digital Learning/Assessing Tools Into Advanced Chinese Newspaper Reading And News Watching, Ying Wang, Lisha Xu

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

This is the report of a year-long blended learning project designed for advanced Chinese newspaper reading and news video watching. In advanced Chinese learning, newspaper reading and news video watching are considered quite challenging for Chinese language learners for their formal style, large and time-sensitive vocabulary, and limited exposure through traditional ways of learning/teaching. To meet these challenges, we incorporated three blended learning components into the traditional language teaching/learning, including: online video news subtitling, the digital exercises and assessment system, and computerized vocabulary-learning modules tailored to the course materials used for two advanced Chinese classes. The project is carried out …

Objects, Omeka, And The "Oops!" Factor: Two Case Studies Of Collection-Based Projects At Wheaton College, Claire Buck, Leah Niederstadt

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

In Spring 2014, Omeka was first used as part of a course assignment at Wheaton College. Students in Professor Leah Niederstadt’s Introduction to Museum Studies were each asked to conduct provenance research on an object from Wheaton’s Permanent Collection. They shared their research using Omeka, an online content management platform. Throughout the semester, students learned new technology, conducted research using primary and secondary sources, and identified images to support the provenance narratives they discovered. Lastly, they presented their research using Omeka. Assessment was conducted at the start and end of the semester to determine the project’s effect on student learning. …

Fitw Module Demos, Jennifer Spohrer, Hannah Weinstein, Rhonda Hughes, Jia Li

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

This session is for representatives from partner colleges on the U. S. Department of Education FIPSE's First in the World grant-funded project to develop a just-in-time, blended approach to mathematics fundamentals support in introductory STEM courses. Partner colleges are Allegheny, Bryn Mawr, Denison, Franklin & Marshall, Grinnell, Lafayette, Mills, Oberlin, Smith, St. Olaf, Vassar, and Wellesley. In this session members from the Bryn Mawr team will demonstrate the prototype modules we have developed using Khan Academy and WeBWorK materials. Our goal is to get feedback on these prototypes, partners envision implementing them to support our target courses (introductory calculus, chemistry …

Digital Learning, Blended Courses: Faculty Innovations And Goals For Student Learning At Keuka College, Nicholas Koberstein, Nancy Marksbury, Enid Bryant, Jennie Joiner, Laurel Hester

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

No abstract provided.

Teaching Critical Thinking Through Online Writing And Debate, Douglas Harvey

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

Establishing an asynchronous learning environment that fosters critical thinking can be difficult due to the constraints of the format. The value of back-and-forth exchange of ideas and points can be muted by the lag time between posts. Students also tend to view forum posting as an individual writing activity, not the debate or discussion that faculty designed such environments to foster. This presentation will examine an attempt during the spring 2015 semester to employ a scaffold approach that supports moving students from individual blogging to debate in an online course. The course content involves the study of the impact of …

Deconstructing The Digital Divide: Critical Media Literacy Implementation In The Classroom, Evelyn C. Obamos

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

In this presentation I explore the complexity of the digital divide and propose to use the framework of critical praxis put forth by Paolo Freire in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Using Freire we are able to build on existing research on the digital divide, contextualize the multi-dimensional issue of the divide, and respond to the social, cultural, and political issues within and beyond the classroom environment.

Online Instruction Made Easy: Getting Started With The Guide On The Side, Erica Defrain

UVM Libraries Conference Day

Come learn about a great new tool for easily creating effective and engaging online tutorials built around the theory of active learning. The Guide on the Side was created by librarians at the University of Arizona and released as an open source download in 2012. We hope to soon have it installed for all to use at the UVM Libraries!

Bringing Online Peer Review Into Blended Teaching, Susan White

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

Motivated by my experience as a student in a MOOC, I have incorporated online peer review of writing assignments into my advanced undergraduate biochemistry courses. Each student submits her review of a course reading or report online, then evaluates work submitted by two or three of her classmates based on a rubric I provide. As peer reviewers, students anonymously assign low-stakes grades and receive credit for their reviews, but they also get an opportunity to write for each other and read their classmate's responses to course topics. Moodle’s Workshop activity was used to manage the submission and review process. I …

Using Blended Learning To Take Advantage Of Learning Science Research, Jennifer Spohrer

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

Why does blended learning work? Some observers have suggested that students simply spend more time with the material in a blended course, but evidence from studies of blended courses is mixed. Learning science research suggests that how learners study also matters, and a blended learning approaches incorporate many tactics shown to be effective, such as formative assessment, repetition at intervals, and metacognitive prompting.

Project Overview And Research Findings, Kimberly Cassidy, Jennifer L. Spohrer

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference

Provost Kim Cassidy and Jennifer Spohrer give an overview of the blended learning study funded by the Next Generation Learning Challenges Wave I grant. They explain the origins of the project, introduce some of the blended courses developed to date, and mechanisms for measuring their impact. They will also present preliminary findings from the research done on fall-semester courses and discuss opportunities and support available for faculty at partner institutions who want to develop and teach blended courses in AY2012-2013 as part of the project.

Student Success And Time Management In College Algebra, Steven Wallace, Mary Wolfe, June Jones, Gaston Brouwer

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

The panel will illustrate how the students’ completion of the instructional system ALEKS objectives correlates with student success and retention rates. The panel will also discuss the influence of factors such as time management on success and the promotion of good study practices for students using computer-based learning systems.

Unlv Faculty Institute On Research-Based Learning For High Impact Classes, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

UNLV Libraries-Greater Western Library Alliance Conference

IF YOU ARE A FACULTY MEMBER . . .

- Teaching a large-enrollment, lower-division course in Fall 2010

- Coordinating a multi-section, high-impact, lower-division course in Fall 2010

- Seeking ways to enrich your course and engage your students

- Committed to including substantive research and critical thinking components that utilize the Libraries’ collections in your course

- Interested in exchanging teaching ideas with colleagues from across the UNLV campus

- Eager to explore creative and effective ways to work with University partners to bring research into the classroom

- Interested in utilizing technology to create active learning environments in …