Week 3 Assessing Collaborative Efforts

Assessment in a collaborative community can be difficult due to the varying skill levels of students and the nature of communication issues in an online learning environment. Collaborative learning communities focus on higher level thinking skills, not the standard “read and repeat” of yesteryear. As Siemens (n.d) states, collaboration is not the issue, it is how we rework the former models of assessment to accommodate this new type of learning. Peers can assess each other in a collaborative manner to assist the educator and the educator needs to realize that not all assessment translates into a ‘mark’. As with younger students, peers can sometimes explain things to each other in a more simplistic form that an educator may not. Collaborative community assessment needs to be incorporated in the course design. Outcomes of the project need to be stated clearly. The educator then can manage the collaboration by using technology in the LMS to assess the students via hourly participation, logins, posts, etc along with peer assessment. Education is shifting to participation in a larger environment, much like in the workplace. The concept of assessment needs to broadened.

Sometimes students are unwilling to participate in the online collaborative group. Students have been conditioned to work by themselves and find a loss of self when asked to work within a learning community. Within a collaborative community students need to be made aware that they will be assessed on participation as well as be recognized as an individual and rewarded as such. Design of the collaborative task is important. The learning community task should be practical and engaging. It’s also important to introduce these students, who for so long have worked by themselves, to the experience within the online community first before jumping into full-blown collaboration.