Building Rubrics

I'm always saying how a rubric can help eliminate arguments with your students about grades, because it helps them understand why they received the grade. I also believe in posting the rubric before a project, to clarify what your expectations are for students.

I saw this really fun online tool for creating rubrics. Yes, it is geared toward K-12 grades, but it works well, and sets up a nice format. The website is called Recipes4Success and the link is: http://recipes.tech4learning.com/index.php?v=pl&page_ac=view&type=tools&tool=rubricmaker

There are templates you can use, or you can create a custom rubric. Enjoy!

What Students Want

Recently I read through a study submitted to the Sloan-C Conference by Ellen Smyth about student perceptions of what makes a good professor. I put out the same questions to our Thunderbird students, and received this response: Thunderbird Survey Results


Our students claim that because they are working full time, with families and other responsibilities, the organization and structure of a course are vital to their success. They also feel that feedback is critical by citing Communicative and Responsive in the top 5.


Here are some tips to improve in those areas:

For Organization

• Make informaiton available in multiple spots, as well as your syllabus


• Make sure the information is consistent in the multiple spots


• Don't clutter coursepages with too many links


• Focus on naming conventions for files. Make sure it is something students understand, not just what you named it for your computer.

For Feedback:

• check forums and emails daily, respond quickly


• use audio and video feedback to reach students on assignment feedback (students love to hear your voice!)


• use first names, and let students know when they've done well


• get outside sources to give additional feedback, don't forget about peer feedback


• Don't just give a 'score', it will only frustrate students. They need to understand how that score was given. Use a rubric if you don't have time for detailed feedback.

Twitter in Moodle

We just added a Twitter feed into our Moodle coursepage for Global Enterprise class, and the students really liked it. It was simple to do. Just go to www.twitter.com/goodies/widgets, and get the code for embedding a specific Twitter account. You can use a professor's personal Twitter account, or a more general one on a specific topic that's appropriate to your class.

Then go into Moodle, and add an HTML box, and paste in the code. It looks really nice, can be color-coordinated with the design of the page, and it is a great resource for students.

Fun Announcements

One of my colleagues showed me this website, and it was so much fun, I had to share it!

Corkboard.me is a shareable bulletin board that allows anyone to put up post-it notes. The website will give you a link that will be your own personal corkboard. You can share the link, or embed it into a website. I did notice that it didn't work well with IE7, but worked perfectly with Firefox.

I linked it into our Moodle LMS, and thought it looked good (see image). I'm thinking of using it to remind students about coming exams, filling out their evaluations, and letting them know about new additions on the coursepage. The students can also create one, and post reminders about the team projects, or just a 'quote of the day' for some social interaction.

Student Suggestions for Online Teams

Recently, we had some of our new graduates talk to our Thunderbird faculty about their experiences with online group projects. They had some interesting comments, and I thought I would share them with you:

• The ideal virtual team size is 3-5 students (Shorter projects = smaller teams)


• Give specific guidelines to teams at beginning of class that include responsibilities, grading rubrics, and technology


• Require teams make initial post early in the week (Wednesday) to make sure discussions aren’t last minute


• Make the Peer Evaluation worth a significant part of the grade


• Consider doing a Peer evaluation at the midpoint of the assignment to determine whether everyone is involved.


• Create a process that will allow a team to ‘fire’ a member that isn’t participating


• Grade inflation and giving every post 100% does not encourage discussion


• Consider forming teams by having students select specific topics they are interested in


• Have more emphasis and training on team building during orientation sessions

Some of these ideas are just common sense, but it's a good checklist for any online group assignments you may considering.

QR Codes for education

Recently I heard about an interesting technology being used in K12 education. QR Codes are those little black and white squares that can be scanned like a bar code by your smart phone.

There have been some fascinating cases using QR codes and cell phones to increase student retention of material. My favorite was an example of a language professor that typed a list of typical Spanish phrases on a handout, and next to each word she put a QR Code. When the student scanned the code, there was an audio file that said the phrase, making it easy for students to practice the correct pronounciation. Another great example is how QR Codes are being used in art galleries to allow people to scan for more information on an artwork, artist, or even a link to a website.

Take some time to think about how to use it in your classroom or your webpages. I've used it to let students scan contact information directly into their phones during orientation sessions, and for quick links to tutorial videos in training sessions.

Here's an example:

Micro-lectures

In the Thunderbird distance programs, we emphasize what we call 'lecturettes'. These are short (15 minute) lecture videos on specific topics. They force the professor to really focus on content, and leave out information that doesn't directly relate. Stories, examples and additional information can be put into a 'conversation' in the class discussion forums.

This article in Smart Classroom, Teaching in One Minute Snippets, talks about 60 second 'micro lectures', and might be an option for those faculty that have content that needs to be updated regularly. A short lecture is by it's nature easier to update with new data, and would take much less time than re-recording an 30 minute video. It's worth a look!