Developing the draft of our final project this week was a perfect example of an assessment that can be used in an online course that fosters high-level critical thinking skills and creativity. It would be nearly impossible for a student to find anything that could be plagiarized.
I asked a question on the course discussion board about utilizing information from the midterm assessments completed by our classmates. This was not done to be a smarty-pants; I could see a reasonable argument for either side. The "do your own work" side keeps participants from selecting assessments already completed to save themselves some work - even if they may not be the most appropriate assessments for their course. Also, by doing your own research on the selected assessment tools, you may find some information or features that were not uncovered in the work done by your classmate.
The argument for the "collaborative" side is that sharing work already completed reduces the duplication of effort. Teachers are notorious for working in solitude and often spend hours redeveloping work that has already been done by others. Starting with work that has already been completed frees time for adapting for the new learning experience and expanding on the work that has already been started. As long as permission is asked and credit is given, using and expanding on the work of others is a reasonable, and even desirable, task.
It will be interesting to see the many approaches to this final project by my classmates. I'm sure each will have a component or strategy that will spark an idea for me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment