Making the Best of Online Learning

In his blog post, "An Aggravating and Energizing Hypothetical,"Dan Meyer responds to the claim that an effective online course could eliminate the demand for face-to-face classes. He acknowledges that online courses are useful for lecture videos and machine-scored tests (e.g., the type of courses offered by Thinkwell and many other vendors), but they lack important features that can only be found in a classroom. Specifically, he writes that the Internet does not do well with "student-student and teacher-student relationships, arguments, open problems, performance tasks, projects, modeling, and rich assessments." I have heard these criticisms before, but what of them?

Significant Learning Experiences

The other day, my daughter asked me an interesting question. She said, "Do you remember the things that you got wrong the first time, and then corrected, better than you remember the things that you didn't make a mistake on?" I thought about it and realized my answer was, yes, I do remember things better when I've struggled to learn them. My daughter said this was true for her as well. This reminded me of the slightly annoying optimists who tell us that we should think of our mistakes as "learning opportunities." The reasoning behind the platitude is simple: if you don't make any mistakes, you won't learn anything new. 

If this is true, if a process of trial-and-error is beneficial, then what does this say about the role of teachers and students?  For example, if we as students are given simple, step-by-step procedures for using a preselected set of tools to create our archives, blogs, and portfolios, does that diminish what we learn or remember? Is it possible that a "spoon-fed" approach might inhibit, rather than promote, our learning? I'm not suggesting that I wouldn't prefer to be shown how to do things, to spend less time wrestling with tools and more time developing my portfolio content and presentation, but the question still interests me. What do I gain from flailing around in the technological waters, learning from my mistakes? Or, from another perspective, am I doing my son (or other students) a disservice if I "rescue" them from their frustation too soon, showing them how to do things they might have figured out on their own if given more time? 

Using Rubrics to Evaluate ePortfolios

This week, we referred to two different rubrics as we reviewed and provided feedback to our peers on the initial drafts of our Capstone (Academic) ePortfolios.

The first rubric was A Generic Rubric for Evaluating ePortfolios, posted on the ePortfolio Portal (adapted and used with permission from Joan Vandervelde's ePortfolio (Digital Portfolio) Rubric). This rubric used the following criteria for the evaluation (total points possible = 36):

1. Selection of Artifacts and Written Communication—All must be clearly and directly related to the purpose of the portfolio. (0 to 9 points)
2. Reflections—Constructive in nature; clearly identifying and describing goals. (0 to 9 points)
3. Use of Multimedia—Appropriate photos, artwork, audio, video, or a combination of these should enhance the purpose of the ePortfolio and make it more interesting. (0 to 6 points)
4. Captions—Are all artifacts clearly identified with title, author, and date? (0 to 3 points)
5. Ease of Navigation—Do all internal and external hyperlinks work? (0 to 3 points)
6. Layout and Text Elements—Are fonts and headings easy to read with appropriate use of white space? Are background and colors aesthetically pleasing? (0 to 3 points)
7. Writing Mechanics—Is the ePortfolio well edited: no errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar? (0 to 3 points)

Google Docs and Etherpads: "Realtime Collaborative Text Editing"

For about a year now, I've been using Google Docs for collaborative text editing. The tool allows me to share documents with other people, either for viewing only or for editing collaboratively. Up to ten people can view or edit a document simultaneously. A revision history, color-coded by author, is created automatically so changes can be tracked and restored to earlier versions if necessary. There's an integrated chat, which shows up as an IM window, so that collaborators can discuss what they're doing while they're doing it. The tool also makes it easy to email and post documents online. (For a more detailed description of Google Docs, see the Google Docs Getting Started Guide.)

This past week, I played around with iEtherPad. Although Google shut down the EtherPad.com servers, after acquiring AppleJet Inc. and the EtherPad collaboration product and technology, it released the code as open source. So, etherpad services are still available through the following links:

iEtherpad
PiratePad
Sinc.in
The Etherpad Foundation
TypeWith.me

When I tried out iEtherpad with my Portfolio in Professional Writing class, I discovered that it had the following features:

Organizing e-Portfolio Contents

Yesterday, I introduced my 14-year-old son to the idea of electronic portfolios. I had already spent the previous day creating my own digital archive (with Google Docs) and website (with Google Sites). I familiarized myself with the way the tools worked as I went along. I also considered some philosophical arguments for the potential of e-portfolios, such as Dr. Barrett's "Balancing the Two Faces of E-Portfolios" and an Educause Quarterly article on a "lifetime personal Web space (LPWS)" (Cohn and Hibbitts, 2004). The latter article by Cohn and Hibbitts raised several questions that I would like to see answered before I become a staunch e-portfolio advocate, specifically:

• "Where is the body of rigorous, research-based evidence that supports the e-portfolio as a pedagogical and presentational tool?" (Or, perhaps more relevantly, what research has been done since their article was published in 2004?) 
• "From a cost-benefit perspective, is it prudent to commit . . . student resources to a time-consuming process . . . ?" (A question I fully expected my pragmatic son would ask me.)
• "Do we know for certain that graduating students who bring electronic portfolios to their job [or college admission] interviews will be more competitive than students who furnish paper-based portfolios?" 

For now, I'm willing to try e-portfolios because the arguments in favor of using them are sufficiently persuasive. My goal in proposing the idea to my son was twofold: to see how he would respond to the arguments in favor of e-portfolios and, assuming he was persuaded, to see what process he would use to create one.

Content Ownership and Privacy Concerns

I am in the process of creating a digital archive of the written work I created while in the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program. I have decided to use Google Docs to store my collection of work, which primarily includes files in Word (.doc or .docx) and PDF. Based on my experience with Google Docs thus far, the application seems easy to use and well-suited to a Web 2.0 portfolio environment. Best of all, the price is right: free for my current low-volume needs. I also feel encouraged by the Data Liberation Front, which appears to offer an escape hatch from Google if I decide to move my digital archive elsewhere.


However, in spite of all the advantages, I still have some reservations about using Google apps, because the Google Terms of Service include the following statements about "Content license from you" (Section 11):