Another crazy week in terms of needing to get things completed. This week, I needed to work on the Final Project for this class and make changes to my proposal for the IRB so I can begin my research for my Thesis. Needless to say, I have had some late nights. The IRB paperwork has been corrected, submitted to my advisor who has signed off on it, and now I get to send it back to the IRB. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have full approval to begin my research.
I am sure you asking "What does this have to do with your blogging for Assessment in eLearning?" this week. Well, it really has a lot to do with it since we needed to construct a Pre-Course Survey as one of this week's activities. One of the changes I needed to make to my IRB proposal was to include a survey which I had not yet constructed. I was looking at the various "free" versions of survey software available but nothing made a very favorable impression for what I wanted it to look like. Then I remembered the various surveys I have received from people here at Stout through Qualtrics. I looked into Qualtrics and was quite impressed with what it was capable of doing. When I looked into it, I realized every student and faculty member at Stout is given a Qualtrics account. This is where I created my survey for my thesis and then created the Pre-Course Survey for our assignment. Both turned out much better than I thought they would!
This worked out great since I created a Pre-Course survey for a 5th Grade Math class. In fact, what I did was create a pre-test to assess what students knew about various topics being taught in the coming year. The final two questions asked the students to assess their knowledge of the basic math facts and how they felt about their abilities/skills in math. This type of data would really help drive the instruction in the class while assisting the students as well.
The topics covered within our reading this week - Cybercoaching and Plagiarism can also be addressed with the survey software I used. Depending on how you phrase the questions, the teacher can encourage the students to be reflective when working on math problems. Carefully wording a problem can change whether or not a student is successful in managing to solve it. When we help to develop the students self-confidence through coaching, they in turn will believe they can accomplish many things even if they are a challenge. Plagiarism is addressed since each student is taking the survey online from their own computer and would not be be near another student (at least in the environment where I teach). Also, the questions ask for the answers to be given in various formats thereby helping to reduce plagiarism as well.
Time to end this week's post. Did you remember to "Spring Forward" this morning? If not, you are an hour behind schedule. I think I better check all of the clocks in the house now before the work week begins. See you next week!
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