Since
I teach developmental reading and composition, I am interested in technology
that will help students achieve success in reading and writing. Therefore, the
technologies that I have chosen that will foster, engage, and assess student reading
and writing skills are first, a classroom response system (CRS) and second, the
discussion board feature on D2L, the learning management system (LMS) used by
my institution.
Classroom Response Systems
First,
I would use the CRS to foster, engage, and assess student reading skills. A CRS
is software or hardware that
allows instructors to poll students for assessment and/or engagement purposes.
For example, an instructor may use a CRS to display multiple-choice questions
within a presentation slide. Students then use cell phones or “clickers” to
respond” (Lander & Stoeckel, 2012).
Since my classes are usually small,
under 25 students, I would not be using this method a lot so would not want my
students to purchase clickers. Therefore, I would have those in the classroom
upload the free app, Socrative (http://www.socrative.com/), to their cell
phones to use as a response system. Then, I would have them use the app in
pairs, with one phone per pair so that those without cell phones could still
participate. Yes, we still have students who do not have smart phones.
The synchronous
activities would probably be game based activities involving reading
comprehension skills with single right answers. Moreover, Socrative aggregates
the results, creating visualizations. In this way, I would be able to see the
levels of understanding for the whole class and individual students. According
to Socrative (2016), this also allows instructors to “use class time to better
collaborate and grow as a community of learners.”
Socrative also provides a
blog, Socrative Garden (http://garden.socrative.com/) with teaching ideas. Although
I have yet to use this app, it seems like it would be a valuable tool in my
toolbox of engaging activities.
Online Discussion Boards
Second,
I would use D2L’s Discussion tool to foster, engage, and assess student writing
skills. As most people reading this blog already know, the Discussion tool on
an LMS, such as D2L, is a collaborative place where students can post, read,
and respond to messages on different topics (University of Colorado-Boulder, 2015).
Specifically, to engage the students, I would provide an
open-ended prompt on a current class topic for students to answer initially and ask them to interact with each other by posting responses to the
initial posts. Students will be able to answer over the course of days rather than minutes as
in a classroom thus allowing time to ponder the question and their responses (McDougall, 2015).
Another aspect of engagement is the chance for students to see what their classmates are thinking (Hall, 2015) and writing. To assess students, I would provide a simple rubric (Giacumo, Savenye, & Smith, 2013) attached to the
discussion board so students can see how I will assess them and then each student can see how I have assessed him or her at the end of the
discussion period.
I
think that these two technologies would be great additions to my toolbox,
providing a variety of modalities for the students and new formative assessment
approaches for me.
References
Giacumo, L. A.,
Savenye, W., & Smith, N. (2013). Facilitation prompts and rubrics on
higher-order thinking skill performance found in undergraduate asynchronous
discussion boards. British Journal of
Educational Technology, 44(5), 774-794. Retrieved from https://www.bera.ac.uk/
Hall, R. A. (2015). Critical thinking
in online discussion boards: Transforming an anomaly. Delta
Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 81(3), 21-27. Retrieved from www.dkg.org
Lander, B.,
& Stoeckel, S. (2012). Tips & Trends: Classroom Response Systems.
Retrieved from http://acrl.ala.org/IS/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2012winter.pdf
McDougall, J. (2015). The quest for
authenticity: A study of an online discussion forum and the needs of
adult learners. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 55(1),
94-113. Retrieved from https://www.ajal.net.au/
Socrative.
(2016). Retrieved from www.socrative.com
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