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The tricky questions for assessment to answer
Assessment as we know it (Jim) is facing, or about to face, something of a perfect storm of crisis. Here are some of the factors bearing down on it. Post pandemic shift to online – during the pandemic most HEIs shifted to online exams. These come in different formats: standard exam essays with anything from 24 hours to 3 weeks to complete; timed ‘real time’ exams over three hours or so; proctored online exams; multiple choice and other automatic assessment. It turns out that students prefer this form of exam, and many HEIs have decided to stick with it going forward. In some research conducted at the OU, comparing the…
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Good online learning – affordances and the online shift
This is the concluding post in my mini-series of Good Online Learning. I looked at groupwork, asynchronous delivery, learning design, assessment and resources. I could have covered many more topics – accessibility, pedagogy, new technologies, community, etc., but let’s stick with these five as a good basis to start considering developing online courses. Essentially I’ve been saying the same thing in each post, which is “consider what you can do differently online rather than just replicating f2f”. A few years ago we used to talk a lot about “affordances“. This came from the psychology work of Gibson, but found more popularity from the design application of Donald Norman. It is…
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Good online learning – resources
When it comes to online learning one of the real advantages is embedding a range of resources in the environment students are engaged in. This is distinct from the lecturer using some videos in their presentation or providing a range of resources in the reading list. It gives an opportunity to interact with and experience a range of different media, opinions and voices as you are learning. This is not to absent the educator – a course is more than just a bunch of resources. But rather it allows the educator to concentrate on the areas where they add value such as explanation, support, discussion. Since the days of learning…
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10 years since the Year of the MOOC
Ah, 2012, Brexit and Trump were but ill-conceived jokes, and we were all bopping along to Carly Rae Jepsen on our way to see Skyfall. And MOOCs, they were everywhere. Suddenly online learning was hot news, and the New York Times declared it “the Year of the MOOC”. Heady days. So, a decade on, after all those promises, that hype, investment, huge learner enrolments, and endless thought pieces, where are we with MOOCs? It’s a good question, and one my colleagues Katy Jordan and Fereshte Goshtasbpour have gone some way to answering in a special collection of JIME. They have republished 25 articles from the JIME archives, spanning the entire…
