Scot Aldred, a Learning Designer somewhere in Rock Hampton, Queensland, Australia (Scot your CV PDF won't open!) has just started up what looks to be an excellent new blog, e-learning. Stephen Downes and Alan from CogDogBlog have already mentioned it - Alan helpfully provides the RSS feed Blogger are hiding: http://e-learning-engagement.blogspot.com/atom.xml.
There's some interesting stuff already - I'll just mention a post called What's Wrong with Group Work? which points to the SPARK self and peer assessment kit, which as well as the open source software provides some good references to the litereature on group work. From the site:
Abstract
“Group projects aren't fair” is a frequent student response in higher education. Group work is used to facilitate peer learning and encourage students to develop collaboration, a crucial graduate attribute. Since assessment strongly influences learning, any course objective to improve peer learning and/or collaboration must have assessment that promotes it.
Self and peer assessment is a valid solution for promoting these objectives and overcoming potential inequities of equal marks for unequal contributions. Group members are responsible for negotiating and managing the balance of contributions and then assessing whether the balance has been achieved.
SPARK enables confidentiality to students rating their own and their peers' contributions. A range of criteria related to team tasks and maintenance promotes fair acknowledgment of individuals' contributions. SPARK automates significant data collection, collation and calculation problems that academics would otherwise face. The factors produced by SPARK are used to change group marks to individual marks. Without this automation, academics with large classes simply could not consider self and peer assessment.
As with all educational technology the essential caveat applies: Careful and thoughtful student-centred integration is vital for success!
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