Week 2.
Database Instruction for an Online Credit Course
Step 3.
Procedures for Educative Assessment
1. Forward-Looking
Assessment
After an instruction session on finding scholarly articles
in databases, I give students this scenario:
I visited a Google office in
Venice, CA. Inside the office building, on almost every floor, there is a fully
functioned, self-serve kitchen, despite the fact that the staff at Google
already have access to a big state-of-the-art, fully staffed kitchen that
offers different kinds of food everyday for free. My trip made me think that food
and creativity must be closely related. Can you find two scholarly journal
articles to support my assumption?
2. Criteria &
Standards
One main learning goal:
As a result of the workshop on finding scholarly articles in
databases, at least 75% of students will be able to find at least two relevant
scholarly articles to support they views on a research question.
Criteria One: Find at least two scholarly articles
from the library’s databases.
STANDARDS
·
Acceptable: The two database articles are
scholarly, and they are either from the same or different databases
·
Poor: One of the two articles is
scholarly, and they are either from the same or different databases
Criteria Two: The two scholarly articles are relevant
to the topic.
STANDARDS
·
Acceptable: The two database articles are
about the relationships between food and creativity
·
Poor: The two database articles are food
and/or creativity, but not their relationships
3. Self-Assessment
I would ask the students
·
First in groups of 2 students examine two
articles from a 3rd student to determine if they are scholarly, and based
on the articles, if they find an answer to the question – food and creativity
are closely related. It’s okay if the articles suggest no close relationships,
contradict each other, or suggest more research needed.
·
Next I’ll ask the student to take another look
at their own articles and see if they would pick the articles again to answer
the question.
4. “FIDeLity”
Feedback
After the group self-assessment, I will share each group’s
opinions about their assigned articles. For articles that meet the acceptable
standard, I will pick a couple of them to show the class the abstracts, and do
the same with sample poor articles.
I will ask each student to post a discussion board message
to reflect on his/her own articles and provide feedback.
Step 5.
Integration
Worksheet for Designing a Course
Learning Goals for Course
|
Ways of Assessing This Kind of Learning
|
Actual Teaching-Learning Activities
|
Be able to access the library’s article databases
|
Assign students to find a particular database by providing
the subject category this database is listed under
|
Video demonstration
|
Be able to identify scholarly journal articles
|
Complete a chart comparing scholarly and popular articles
in different areas with the information on popular articles filled out.
|
·
Video demonstration;
·
Ask students to compare two sets of articles:
1. One scholarly + one popular
2. Both from scholarly journals
but one of them is a book review
|
Be able to find scholarly articles from databases
|
·
Video demonstration
·
Reflection on search techniques used in
finding the articles
|
|
Be able to find relevant scholarly articles from databases
|
Include two scholarly articles to an annotated
bibliography project
|
·
Peer assessment on relevance
·
Self reflection on relevance
|
Hi Hong, I'm glad to see you tried out filling out that worksheet! It can help so much to visualize where you're going. Your research question / assignment prompt sounds like something students would be interested in, and I love that you are sort of showing them a researcher's process of coming up with a research question to investigate. Look forward to reading more.
ReplyDeleteNicole, Thank you for reading my posts and giving your comments! I'm ashamed that the posts have so many typos and grammar mistakes. I'll fix them. I enjoy the class!
DeleteHi Hong. I still enjoy your experience at the Google office. It is an interesting, yet fun, topic for students to explore. Your criteria are helpful to me. I often feel like I complicate assignments and rubrics, but your criteria are clear, but meaningful. I referred to your chart while creating my own chart. Thank you for proving a good example for me!
ReplyDeleteHi Emily, Thank you for the comments! I enjoy taking this class with you, and working on our credit courses together this semester (sorry that so far I'm mostly on the receiving end). It's been very helpful. It reminds me of our library school days.
DeleteHong, I like your use of small groups for self-assessment. I'm a fan of peer learning and think students are more receptive to comments and feedback from classmates than from instructors. That said, I do have one suggestion: for your Google scenario, maybe you could ask the students to find articles that support or challenge your assumption about the link between food and creativity? I try to encourage students to use sources that look at both sides of a question. Great post, looking forward to more!
ReplyDeleteEliot, I like your suggestion! I expect that the students will find articles that look at both sides, but I think it's much helpful to the students to explicitly say it in the assignment. I'll make the change. Thanks!
DeleteHi Hong, great post! I By reading your post and others I learn more and more about the standards and the criteria that you use making things way more systematic and clear for the students if you point them out to them. About the standards, do you have a third category such as 'exceptional'? The self-assessment is a very good suggestion too. I wonder how serious your students are about this exercise? The idea of pair/share is a very good techniques and asking afterwards to talk about their own search results is great. Thx ! Michael
ReplyDeleteHi Michael, thank you for your comment! I haven't tried this assignment with my online students yet, but I will in a couple of weeks. I thought about adding an "exceptional" category, but I got stuck when I tried to come up with the corresponding standards. For example, for Criteria One, "Find at least two scholarly articles from the library databases," what would exceptional be - find more than two articles? I don't think quantity makes it exceptional and I couldn't think of what could. That was why I skipped that category. Any suggestions?
Delete