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.



Elements of Distance Education Diffusion

                              Elements of Distance Education Diffusion Reflection

I agree with George Siemens in regards to collaborative interaction. I believe collaborative interaction has evolved and aids distance education in the development of its own identity. Collaborative interaction has evolved since the beginning of the basic emails, chat rooms and conference calls. Distance education students now use Zoho docs and Google docs which allows users to share and edit documents online. Skype allows users to see each other as they converse online. Wiki pages and online blogs allow students to collaborate with each other online instantly. Distance education learners also have the ability to utilize social media such as Facebook to collaborate with each other. Students must also submit a certain number of posts in a given amount of time in their online courses. Discussion boards and dropboxes are some online tools that can determine how much interaction occurred.


                                                                    Reference
Laureate Education Inc. (2008). Siemens, G.The Future Of Distance Education. Baltimore, MD: Author

Reflection of The Next Generation of Distance Education

                                                 Benefits of Distance Education    

        The articles discuss the need of the evolution of distance education. The articles stated learners have to adapt to a collaborative environment although this way of learning may not benefit all learners. Distance education has to develop a new type of instruction that reflects a method of instruction that learners will utilize.
        The public education in my state has changed drastically as opposed to their performance level in the past. I believe that distance education has more to offer than a traditional classroom. I believe that classes in an online environment are more rigorous than the curriculum in traditional classroom. According to Moller, Wellesley, and Huett (2008), there has not been a significant amount of evidence that the traditional classroom models are effective at all. However, I do agree with Dr. Simonson's belief that distance education will continue to evolve but it will not replace the traditional classroom.
        Distance education has the potential to be the answer to a lot of the issues faced in education today. In order to fulfill the potential, the issues that lie within distance education, as well as in the traditional classrooms have to be addressed. Teachers have to be adequately trained with technology and instructional design.
       
                                                          Reference
Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W. R., & Coleman, C. (2008). The Evolution of Distance Education:               Implications for Instructional Design on the Potential of the Web.Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 52(5), 63-67. 

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

Moller, L., Foshay, W. R., & Huett, J. (2008). The Evolution of Distance Education: Implications for Instructional Design on the Potential of the Web. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To   Improve Learning, 52(4), 66-70.

Moller, L., Foshay, W. R., & Huett, J. (2008). The Evolution of Distance Education: Implications for Instructional Design on the Potential of the Web. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To   Improve Learning, 52(3), 70-75.