Small pieces, loosely joined

UMW reports on how they developed a toolbox for first year students that would encourage them to take control of their learning, see college as something more and different form “13th grade.” Learning is all about making connections and social softwares allow this in amazing ways. Their criteria was: web-based abd “RSSy” (aggregatable) and empower students as individuals AND as members of a community. The tools inlcude MediaWiki, Wordpress, Delicious and Flicker. Look at Steve Greenlaw’s as an example.

They wanted these freshmen to learn how to be part of a learning community, with the idea that thye will take this forward in their academic lives. Student post-course survey showed that the tool students are most wanted to use more was FLickr!

How did they structure the assignments and deal with grading? Portfolio: choose their best posts, analyze why they were best, tell how they show engagement with the class. Barbara Ganley says she has students create grading rubrics with her and then argue for a grade! She also asked her question that she mentioned in her own session yesterday: what happens to students once they leave this engaged learning community and go back to the “old style” in the rest of the university. Gardner talks about how some students now ask to use their own blog space and link in to the class blog. (Now I have another question: how do you decide: single linked blogs or one multiuser blog?) Gardner’s fascinating vision of the future is that we will all have our own lifelong learning space that we will make our connections in and store info in and connect to different classes at different times in our lives!