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emoddie — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:59:41 CDT

This is the home page of the wiki on assessing contributions to online discussion forums. It was created in response to an e-tivity for Week 4 in the Beyond E-Moderating course.

E-tivity 4.1: Collaborating using a WIKI

Purpose: to practise developing, in a small team, an e-tivity for a group using a thread and a WIKI.

Task: Prepare, in your team, an e-tivity (including the spark, purpose, task and response, along with any resources) on one of the topics in the above text for a small group to work on together. Your group's e-tivity should contain simple guidance to participants on working together in using your collaboration method of choice.

You will find our group response in Our e-tivity.

o0o

Our e-tivity

emoddie — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:47:24 CST

Definitive e-tivity

Spark

We believe that the ability to reflect, make public your reflections and receive feedback on them is key to learning. One of the best ways of doing this is through online tools such as discussion forums, blogs and wikis. For further information click here.

Purpose

This exercise is designed to:

encourage reflection on the nature of online participation;

develop your understanding of the importance of valuing contributions through effective feedback.

Task

Using the group wiki, create a template for assessing online contributions. Use the notes or comments boxes of your wiki to reflect on your template, highlighting any strengths and weaknesses.
Response

Provide constructive feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of at least one other template. Alternatively, reflect on how you would act on feedback given to you.

With the feedback the teacher/trainer should appreciate the work done by the learner. A large part of the feedback should be very positive to motivate the learner to continue his/her work. Peer reviews should appreciate the contributions of others, too. Critical elements in feedback should be formulated very precisely and clear to be understandable.
Resources

Please start with our model template (also available as a PDF) for assessing online participation. See other resources for links to articles and papers on the assessment of online interaction.

Template for assessing online contributions

emoddie — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:41:17 CST

	- 40%	40- 49%	50 - 59%	60 - 69 %	70 +%
Frequency	few contributions	small number of posts unevenly distributed	regular posts but uneven distribution (e.g. lots all on Friday)	regular posts evenly distributed - quite a few early postings	daily posts, with plenty of early contributions
Length or Quantity of information	totally inappropriate length for topic under discussion	too much/too little information given - the purpose is difficult to understand	slightly too much/too little - the purpose/meaning gets lost at times	most of the postings have an appropriate amount of information in them. but this is not consistent	appropriate amount for nature of arguments articulated
Netiquette & encouragement of others	no regard for ground rules of internet use or thought to how others will view posting	starting to show sensitivity to others in regards to posting and attempts to encourage others to join in	demonstrates awareness of good social interaction at times and is starting to use questioning skills to encourage engagement of others, but this is not consistent	demonstrates an awareness of good social interaction within an online environment & starts to further groups understanding	poses substantive questions aimed at furthering the group’s understanding; synthesizes other students’ responses, using good communication skills
Quality	repeats what has already been said	makes judgments without justification	starts to link facts and ideas within the discussion	builds on others’ responses to develop threads and offers new elements of information	articulates complex arguments supported by evidence and moves discussion forward
Relevance	never keeps to the topic under discussion or previous postings	occasionally keeps to either some of the main discussion or previous postings, but sometimes is off topic	keeps to the same discussion as previous postings, but not normally on the main theme under discussion	keeps to the main theme of the discussion but not normally to previous postings	keeps to both the main theme of the discussion and also to previous postings
References (inc. links and attachments)	no, or few references to additional sources	some use of references, but this is not consistent	occasionally provides additional resources for the group	frequently contributes either additional resources or substantiates views	always contributes references in a variety of means e.g. through attachments, substantiating views etc.

More on blogs, wikis and discussion forums

emoddie — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:18:36 CST

Blogs, wikis and discussion boards are useful but every tool has it's own weaknesses and strengths.
Discussion forums are useful for exchange based on a vivid discussion between several persons.

A blog normally is written by one author, the readers can add their thoughts by comments. The author herself can formulate the ideas of the comments in a new contribution. If there are too many comments - a blog used as kind of discussion forum - it's not userfriendly anymore.

A WIKI is for formulating text together. It's not that straightforward to reproduce long discussion threads in a WIKI. In contrast to a blog a WIKI has more authors.

Based on the explicit type of exchange and reflection wanted a discussion forum, blog or WIKI can be used.

Thoughts on an e-tivity on netiquette

jupidu — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 12:08:59 CST

Example: Rules in the virtual room - discussing the netiquette

Target Group: Students of the Study Degree Social Work, 3. Semester
Class: Cooperating and Communicating in the virtual Room- EDV3

Objective: Cooperating in the discussion forum - posting, reading other contributions, structuring - Working on rules for the virtual room

Task: Read the netiquette - discuss it with your neighbour - formulate a short common answer
with respect to the following questions:

Braucht es Ihrer Meinung nach Umgangsregeln im virtuellen Raum? Wenn ja, wozu? Wenn nein, warum nicht? Is there a need for rules in a virtual room? If yes, what for? If not, why not?

Ist die Netiquette in Ihren Augen als Vorschlag für den gegenseitigen Umgang im virtuellen Raum geeignet? Is this netiquette in your opinion a good proposal for communication in a virtual room?

Was würden Sie zur Netiquette hinzufügen / streichen? What would you add/delete to the netiquette?

Read the postings of the other students and give feedback in the discussion forum, at least for 2 times.

Material: The Netiquette, Chapter 2 of the script: "Construction of the Internet (Mantovani G., (2001). The Psychological Construction of the Internet: From Information Foraging to Social Gathering to Cultural Mediation. CyberPsychology & Behaviour, 4), Psychological View on the Internet ( N. Döring (2003) „Sozialpsychologie des Internet", Hogrefe Verlag, Göttingen)

Framework: This learning activiy runs during Exercise 2.
Time frame: About 30-40 minutes

Assessment: At least 2 postings are necessary to get 1 point. (During the semester a maximum of 25 points can be achieved - 25 points are in straight correlation to the ECTS points (1 ECTS for this class).
5 stage modell of Gilly Salmon: 1. and 2. stage: Access and motivation, online sozialisation

How the example worked
This learning activity worked very well. The students discussed the netiquette intensively and as a resunt a reviewed netiquette was developed - which will be discussed next year :-)

Resources

adeleA — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:22:50 CST

You'll find some resources on assessing online interaction stored in my Kingston University content system folder:

Assessing Online Contributions

I've added a few pdf attachments below about the SOLO Taxonomy which may prove helpful - Adele