David, well done. I found this: http://www.collegedevelopmentnetwork.ac.uk/events/annual-awards
Your report (Built using Mahara you say) eg this: http://mahara.sruc.ac.uk/view/view.php?id=8252
Is this out of the box Mahara or some special coding?
-Derek
Hi Derek
No coding involved, purely out of the box tools wthin Mahara.
Seeing that the students utilised Mahara for the first two of three stages of their assessment using Mahara, I thought practice what we preach and build an overview of the project using Mahara. It's not great but if it opens doors for other institutions then that's great.
Ali
Hi Ali,
Did you use the Moodle "Workshop" module together with Mahara?
If so how did that work for you?
Regards,
Paul
Hi Paul
What we did was create page templates within Mahara with the provided sub-headings (text-boxes), which later the HNC students copied.
Once we had the templates in place within Mahara, we then constructed Word documents with the same structure and sub-headings, which were stored within Moodle for the students to download, build up their draft-based evidence and then submit to the Workshop activities.
Once the HND level students anonymously peer assessed with their formative grades and constructive feedback on the Word documents, the HNC students then progressed with copying the Mahara templates and built their evidence up according to their peers within Mahara. Very effective, for both groups.
Hope that helps,
Ali
Hi Ali,
A very interesting and innovative approach. How was it received by the students? I'm really interested here, especially since I'm looking at a similar situation here in Switzerland with Engineering students.
The issue I'm faced with though is that the students analyse every aspect of their workloads, and if they see any duplication of work, then they will complain.
The workshop end with the Word documents, you say this was a draft based phase, and that you then went on afterwards to put the final version on Mahara, did you then assess that through the assignment module in Moodle?
Did the students have the possibility to take their drafts, and save them in Mahara?
Would it also be useful if Mahara and Moodle had the possibility to work together through the Workshop module too?
Just some thoughts here.
Paul
Hi Paul
I have created an online report within Mahara covering the project, which can be found here: http://mahara.sruc.ac.uk/view/view.php?t=ohNt54grnVAMCfKGqsHi
When we introduced the project to the Higher National Certificate (HNC) students, the new online Graded Unit assessment model was quite overwhelming for them to start with. With the support from myself (online technologies etc) and the lecturer pennies started to drop with the students as we went along. I met with this group a year later and they were actually asking me to design and develop the model for their Higher National Diploma (HND) Graded Unit assessment. They were extremely positive about the whole initiative! What I recognised is that these students wanted the easy option, within a Word document, which they are accustomed to. Once they seen they had complete ownership of their e-Portfolios, i.e. adding their images and video, they were engaged. It was hard work for them, but the end results were outstanding, as you will see within the online report above.
We also provided a brief introduction to the HND students covering the project, who were to be the anonymous peer reviewers, and they loved the concept of the templates within Mahara and using video and image evidence for assessment etc. At the start, they were very reluctant in peer reviewing their fellow students. We assured them that it was completely anonymous and once they were carrying out their peer review duties, they were hooked. The lecturer did provide guidance on providing (positive and constructive) feedback to the HNC students, and with the HNC students who acted upon this feedback did very well with their assessment. As, you will see within the online report above, not only did the HNC student's work throughout the course improve, so did the HND's...considerably!
Yeah, the students submitted their collection of Mahara pages to Moodle for assessment using the Moodle Assignment.
I did think about the students embedding their draft documents within Mahara and discussed this with the lecturer and she was happy to go through the drafts within the Workshop activities.
I also did think about the students submitting their Secret URL links to the Workshop activities. The students are able to hide their identity within Mahara, but we wanted to utilise the plagiarism tool (Turnitin) within the Workshop activities, hence why we had the students submit Word documents for the first stage. I actually think this method of the using the Word draft documents first worked better.
Cheers
Ali