This headline popped out at me last week: Griffiths University journalism students to be marked on Tweets.
“BRISBANE university students are the first in the country to be assessed on the social networking site Twitter.”
In justification for the move (which not all students were happy with) the lecturer who is requiring students to tweet as part of their course said “We thought it was important to introduce it because increasingly employers are asking employees to use these kind of (social networking) mechanisms and marketing and promotional devices”.
A lecturer at another Australian university said that all higher education providers should be implementing social network technology processes into curriculums.
My brain immediately said - what sort of assessment? Summative (it counts in the final mark)? Or Formative (a learning process- a task that need to be done, but is not graded)?
While it may be true that Griffiths is the first Australian university to incorporate assessment of Twitter in their course, it would surprise me if they were the first to add the use of Twitter as a learning element. of course it would rather depend on whether electronic devices are banned wouldn’t it?
I found a rubric for assessing the use of Twitter (see below) on an American teacher’s blog. Harry Grover Tuttle is keen to use web 2.0 tools in his teaching and raises some interesting questions about how we assess student’s learning in web 2.0 based environments. And for Australian educators it is not a question that is going to go away, particularly in the school’s sector where ICTs are to be an underpinning element in each of the frameworks in the National Curriculum.
So what can you point me to? Are you using web 2.0 tools in your teaching and learning? How are they being assessed? Is it the learning that is being assessed or the use of the tool? What should happen? Would you/do you use a grading system?
6 Comments
Presently I am just concluding a project that has involved a number of students studying at TAFE where they have been using Facebook as part of their course work. We developed a process whereby we could upload tasks to Facebook have students engage in a series of collaborative exercises based around a particular unit of competence yet restrict access from outsiders.
Preliminary findings indicate that not only did the students enjoy the activity but that they found it complemented and assisted with their studies. They were less inclined to use Twitter as part of the exercise as it didn’t provide such a connection with their peers.
Did the students often use twitter Malcolm - there has been a suggestion that it is not something youngies are using
Malcolm, I’d love you to write a short post for From the Coal Face on the project, if you’d like to feature it on my blog. Email me if you are interested. ksmith@educationau.edu.au
I have been using “Glogster edu” with my 6/7 classes. The Web 2 tool “Glogster” was the avenue used to express and publish “Book Reviews”. I have used a book review rubric to assess the process. The rubric has an element to assess creativity and that’s where I’ve used ‘Glogster’ as assessment. It’s been used as an ongoing discussion focussing on the social networking element eg. cyberbullying, netiquette.
I have been using Twitter as a communication tool with my (online) overseas students. They can ask (short) questions and I can answer for everyone to see. Since we only follow each other we have built a sort of ‘community’. I don’t assess the use of the tool, but the students can discuss their assessment tasks and ask advice of each other through the tool.
I have used Twitter as an assignment but would like a rubric. This one is a good start. Anyone have anything else?
One Trackback/Pingback
[…] The twits have a good dose of questions, humour, good mix of images and videos from the events, and links to appropriate research that may have been done elsewhere. Here is a rubric for assessing students on Twitter: http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/2009/10/21/assessing-learning-with-web-20-twitter/ […]
Post a Comment