The Living Schoolbook

Content Collection – Assignments

The assignment tool is arguably the most used tool in courseware packages and faculty and students expect it to behave a certain way with certain rules. The student work handed in through a traditional assignment tool currently is “stuck” in that tool and subsequently is unavailable for students to use in their portfolios without a lot of extra steps that duplicate their data in their personal content area. The assignment tasks will need to be changed slightly to accommodate this new task:

1. Establish an event (an assignment) that describes the work and deliverables that students are expected to deliver by the assignment due date.
2. Describe (via a tagging mechanism) the expected learning outcomes from the event. Along with this description will come a description of the rubric that will be used to assess student work.
3. Review student work and assess the student using the established rubric.
4. Release student grades and ratings to the students.
5. Deposit the student work in each student’s personal content area as a piece of standardized content (with outcome and assessment metadata) that can be used in portfolios.

Content Collection – Discussions

The discussion tool is also a common tool used in courses to share ideas and content in a threaded forum. This content “lives” in the discussion tool and is managed with the class and, as such, is not made easily available to students for reuse in their portfolios. While discussions are usually difficult to assess, the subject matter is rich material for personal reflection and, as such, participation in class discussions should be included as a means for content collection for portfolio development. The tasks associated with a class discussion may also need some modification to ensure that the discussion content is made available to the portfolio author”

1. Establish a forum that describes the topic to be discussed and whether or not the material will be released to students as material for their portfolios.
2. Describe (via a tagging mechanism) the expected learning outcomes from the discussion.
3. Either the faculty or students will start discussion threads and add posts to the discussions threads and reply to each other.
4. At the completion of the discussion, deposit the discussion threads/posts/forums that have been designated as “releasable” in each student’s personal content area as a piece of standardized content that can be used in portfolios.