Thoughts on Assessment

Had a text chat with Birgit this evening on Messenger (early morning for her) and we kicked around a few ideas for facilitated pages. I thought of starting by inviting people to report on their own experiences of assessment (on the receiving end), then thinking about which might be appropriate for the new learning environments. Also, what new techniques might be needed. The great thing is, everyone has been on the receiving end of assessment - good and bad experiences. It's possible that the new learning environments may produce 'good' and 'bad' forms of assessment too?

We will probably set up a joint page or two as well.

Started reading a bit of the course notes today. There's certainly a lot to read!

Assessment in Emerging Educational Environments

I checked through the wiki titles and no one has investigated this before (surprisingly) so have started to set the page up. Will need to give the content headings a bit of thought though - am not sure how best to structure it. Maybe taking each type of learning environment in turn - or perhaps turning it around and thinking about which types of assessment are / aren't suitable or appropriate any more? Hmmm - will think about this.

Also, maybe I should have called it 'Assessment in Emerging Learning Environments'? No problem, that can be changed.

Starting FET 8611 Emerging Environments for Learning

Semester 3 has already started, and there are already many introductory postings from fellow students in webct. It's nice to see some familar names too, including Birgit & Perdita (the 3 of us changed our course enrolments to stay with the same tutor, Peter Evans). One of the first tasks for the course is to become familar with the knowledgeGarden environment - not a problem for the three of us as we used it last semester - but we musn't become complacent either. I've updated my user page and now need to think about pages I could facilitate - have a few ideas but need to check through the wiki titles to make sure I am not 'reinventing the wheel'. Also need to print off the course readings and make a start on them. Andy has already contributed a discussion thread so some serious catch up is needed!

I'm really looking forward to this course and so pleased to be working in a constructive, supportive and friendly environment. I can't imagine any face to face course being as rewarding as the online community we have helped to create.

This blog will take a more serious turn than previously - I'll still post the occasional photo, but these musings will hopefully provide a basis for composing the end of course hand in (assignment 1). However, we're off on a 2 night walking holiday next Friday so might have some nice photos of the English countryside to post here later on.

PS Saw Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band in concert in Edinburgh last Monday, with Adrian Edmonson and Phil Jupitus - they were EXCELLENT! Very funny and good music too.

Finished FET5622

The course (FET 5622 Creating Interactive Multimedia) was challenging but very enjoyable, particularly with the support of Birgit, Perdita, Peter (our tutor) and the other students in webct and knowledgeGarden. I finally submitted the third and last assignment for the course yesterday and am looking forward to the end of semester conference next week. Learning to use Fireworks and Flash was an uphill struggle and I still have a lot to learn, especially Actionscript, but plan to use Flash more in the future and have an excellent book, SAMS Flash 8 in 24 hours by Phillip Kerman: http://www.phillipkerman.com/books/

Now, it's on to the next course, FET8611. Only one more to go after that (Masters Project 1) and still on track to graduate in September 2007.