Module Three: Assessing Collaborative Efforts

Participation in a collaborative learning community should be assessed by the frequency of postings that are reflective to the learning goals of the course. The varying levels of skill and knowledge that students bring to courses should not affect the instructor’s “fair and equitable assessment” of learning. The instructor should use a fair grading system that has equivalent expectations from each learner (Palloff & Pratt, 2005). Each learner should be expected to contribute a minimum number of postings that reflect assignments and/or discussions.

If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, the other members of the learning community should try to encourage participation as much as they can and should also make the instructor aware of their lack of cooperation. The instructor could use a scenario that reflects real-world application to collaborative learning (Jordan, 2012). The instructor should make a decision to either allow the member to work on the assignment individually or penalize the member for failing to collaborate in the learning community. The instructor should also remind the student that is their responsibility to meet the course expectations that are outlined in the course syllabus. The impact could be negative on his or her assessment plan because the member refused to collaborate with others and will not have the same learning experience as the others in the course. This also negatively impacts the assessment plan because the student could not be assessed by his or her peers (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008).

Reference

Jordan,T. (2012). Module Three Post. Retrieved from http://tmjordan.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archive.html.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Principles of Distance Education. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.