Water Lillies (Trinidad andTobago)

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Week three December 4th and 5th of WED 463

The End

    (Last weekend) Week three of WED 463 began with a wikispaces exercise, the exercise was listed in the handout portion on the right hand side of our Wiki  online classroom discussion forum. The exercise was the match the objective and assessment  exercise the 2003 version, in this exercise you were task with looking at the objective and see if what was written in the objective, matched what was written in the assessment. The clue was to look at the verbs used and see if they matched. In this exercise the professor used what is called RESPONSE PATTERN.Its a pattern that follows the pattern of no,no,no, no or yes yes yes instead of a mixing of answers to questions asked. Response Pattern is a give away,in this exercise the question was, when performing the assessment did you think a response pattern was used? Answer to that question is IT WAS, the professor took the risk to see if the students noticed a pattern response being used or not, it is a psychological test to see how the thought process works. The class also touched on Asynchronous and synchronous learning, Asynchronous (not real time), synchronous (real time), we looked at the difference between the two and the pros and cons of using this type of learning.
     We also look at at the component of test taking , and looking at referral back approach, which is a skill that some test takers use. Touched on text anxiety and ways you can help a test taker diminish anxiety, an example was: Have a quiz versus a test, it helps handle test anxiety, it helps the test taker feel more comfortable and have more confidence taking a quiz versus a test. It may also help the instructor see the areas where the tester is really struggling and help the tester and instructor revisit the problem areas and successful learn the material.
    Saturday class also had a lot of revisiting involved, touching on the Levels of Evaluations again, Criterion Reference and Normal (Bell Curve) Reference. We also touched on the five levels of Evaluation, in the review, the question was What does the levels mean? The five levels were listed and discussed in class. These levels are:
1. Reaction
2.Learning
3.Transfer
4.Impact
5.ROI
 Levels 1-4 recognized person of interest for these levels is Donald Kirkpatrick, for level 5 Jack Phillips
Why use these levels?  Answer: it fine tunes training.
it was stated in the classroom discussion that only 5% of organizations use level 5 of the evaluation scale, reason being , it is Hard to measure, it takes a lot of thinking and a lot of people are unable to do this because you have to quantify. The difference was also noted between levels 4 and 5 which is (Money) ROI is $ Business/Impact (Numbers)

EVALUATION LEVELS





Level

Measurement Focus

Examples

1.
Reaction
Participant feelings about a program
"Smile sheets"
Interviews, Discussions

2.
Learning
Changes in knowledge, skills, and attitudes
Written pre/post tests
Skill laboratories
Simulations
Projects; Oral exams

3.
Transfer
Changes in on-the-job behavior (application)
Performance checklists
Performance appraisals
Critical incident analysis
Self-appraisal

4.
Business Impact
Changes in business of an organization
Production indices--
(Cost, scrap, accuracy; rework, schedule compliance, output, referrals, quality)
Grievances, Law suits
Absent/Tardy rates
Medical reports/leaves
Turnover
Accident rates
Employee suggestions
Customer complaints

5.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Compares program benefits to the costs.
Comparative Monetary Values (Productivity converted to $&c; cost avoidance (e.g. law suits); cost per time or error reduction; retaining vs losing customers (both internal and external) cost per complaint reduced or prevented; cost of absenteeism, tardiness, accident; safety violation



    Another exercise was done using the table above, the exercise was  located  in Wiki  on the right hand side under Evaluation levels, the exercise completed and discussed in class was the Hairstylist scenario  evaluation level practice. In this exercise the  5 levels of evaluation were examine to see which levels were present and which were not, at the end of the exercise, levels 1-4 was present, you needed more info ans the present of $ amt in order to have reach level 5 the ROI and the data, and information of the money made was not presented in the scenario. During the discussion of the scenario, classmates including myself, gave a gender to the salon manager or the stylist, it was noted by the professor to keep material that is written "gender neutral."
We discussed  the difference between Education, Presentation and Training
Education: General Background (Nice to know)
Presentation: Give out the information (passive approach)
Training: must include practice and feedback
  We touched on REWORK  (James Harrington) Harrington we spend 40% of time on reworking ,Total quality management (TQM.) Professor Ackerman, has a design called the kiss hug design, which due to copyright reasons i will not post it into this blogger it is her own design, and i wouldn't want someone else taking credit for her work, but in simple terms it shows the difference of treatment and observation, using post test, pre or post testing, post testing only, having a control group and pre-testing only.
 We also talked about a website called merlot which is an open source site where you can find online learning material  to include in training sessions. MIT developed the open source idea, open source means open to the general public for viewing
    The class did an AHA moment  before breaking for lunch on what was learned during the morning session of class. During the evening portion of the class the Final exam was to create a quiz item and critique, what was different about creating a quiz item this time around was the fact that the class had experience with this assignment, the quiz item created we better developed, and not simple  low standard question, but very well thought of and developed questions, what also improved was the critiquing, the first time this assignment was accomplished there was a great deal of time spend on critiquing the quiz items, this time around, hardly any issues with the item and less critiquing took place, due to better understanding of using guidelines, developing higher level questions,being precise and accurate.
      Saturday class ended with 90 second reflection of WED463, there were a lot of great insight from each student and the reflection portion of class showed how much everyone learned and gave each student an idea of what the other took away from the course.I learned a lot more about formative evaluation, and being more discipline using webtools such as SkypeZunal and Wiki.
    As for Sunday class we have to finish up all assignments, wiki post, blogs, catch up work because it is all due on Monday 6th at 8am.I enjoyed this course and took some great learning tools away from it. IT WAS FUN!!!!!!!!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

E- Weekend 20th and 21st November

New York City


    E-weekend , no face to face meeting this session, instead students will work with their groups via Skype, Wiki, or meet at a designated location.  Most of the class met on skype. During the e-weekend session groups will post their webquests for others to critique and perform the tasks and processes set forth in the webquest, groups will also complete a quiz that was created using Proprofs and embedded in the webquest to show if each individual understood the lesson thought. And post reviews on each webquest in wiki.


   Dr Ackerman posted the directions of reviewing each groups webquest via Skype, the directions are as follows:
"Examine each webquest (see wiki discussion for links)
-Complete each wq QUIZ by using a name we recognize (if you want credit)
-For each wq review, post the following in review wiki discussions designated for each review and in the actual wq if you are logged into zunal (optional).
-Your recognizable name (often not wiki user name)
-Name of webquest you are reviewing
-2 unique observations about wq --refer to this wq rubric http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestrubric.html
-2 observations about the quiz (refer to our guidelines)
-2 recommendations for future revision/enhancement of this wq
As professionals, please state your reviews in a unique manner so they don’t appear as if you just made copies without careful consideration. The reviews should demonstrate that you examined the individual webquests.
Lots of creative approaches and application of 463 in terms of assessment and evaluation as well as this formative evaluation technique (review process). Congrats – AA"


   The first webquest i did was "How to hunt for Mullets",  out of the 4 question i got one wrong the last question, probably because i didn't pay close attention to the other names for a mullet.I enjoyed reading Kim's mediation webquest, took away some breathing techniques.Kent's group did a PBJ webquest  yummy, yummy, yummy i got PBJ in my tummy. Josh, Sharon and Dennis - How to make cup cake cakes very informative, i will try making cupcakes now i see how easy it is. Darrius, Gerald and Carlos- USA job Applications webquest great for anyone wanting to apply to federal jobs and not sure how to go through the process, which can be tedious at times, i should know i have had to use USAJOBS for my current line of employment and i had help completing the entire application process.
    On Sunday 21st, group worked again via skype, I reviewed the last webquest April, Nephtali and Christine- How to pair wine with food. Very informative and well done webquest the pictures in the webquest were very rich and magnificent made you want to eat.Overall each Webquest created was interesting, the topics were fun, some were humorous, others very informative, some made you hungry.In the end they were all great.The quizzes were very easy to follow, also having the entire class on via Skype worked well to. 



Monday, November 8, 2010

Week Two of WED 463

Dominican Republic

    Saturday class started with " something we learned since last session."   Using the cushball everyone shared their experiences as to what he or she learned, this was followed by the correct way to post a file and its format. The class also had a discussion of more web base learning programs that can be used versus having face to face classroom discussions. Two of the websites  mentioned were zorap and tokbox.
    The five levels of evaluation was then taught by Dr Ackerman and the  class went over the TV survey  that was done as a virtual exercise on the Sunday of the October class meeting.  We discuss the purpose of the survey, why is a survey done and how is the data collected used. The class also discussed the screen orientation of how an online survey should look, for example item 7 of 20  so the person knows  how long again until the survey ends, the section name,the header, footer,a back, forward,quit, help,save and finish later button, making sure the survey is grammatically correct, easy to navigate through and the point of contact for the survey.The class also discuss the difference between normal reference and criterion reference and which was the  better of the two.
   On wikispace there was a post by professor Ackerman for the November meeting concerning writing guidelines,  we discussed some of these guidelines, for example avoid always and never and some other points, we also touched on primacy, regency and effect and how people remember by  chunking or using mnemonics to help with recalling information. This was followed by a group exercise , where we used the guidelines we learned to critique a questionnaire. Another exercise followed where the groups once again had to create one multiple choice  item that measured something from 463. This had to include directions, the group members and the correct answer to the question, this exercise was then critiqued by Dr. Ackerman. After this exercise we had and "AH HA" moment from what was learned in the multiple choice exercise, some students stated " make sure directions are clear, KISS,- keep it simple stupid, know if what you taught is what the student understands and always go back and look at the instrument that provided the data." The purpose of this exercise was to help the students understand how to complete their group projects that  they were going to create using zunal and proprofs. (a quiz maker.) The guidelnes for creating  our group project  were:

1.Create a 20 minute webquest using Zunal,
2. Zunal does not have a free evaluation offer so to work around this and evaluation component would be created  you can use ProProfs  which is a free quiz maker.
3. Link to a quiz maker of your choice consisting of at least 4 questions to your Zunal webquest
4.Post the URL for you webquest in wiki discussion
5. Complete other webquest from classmates group.

 Sunday class, some students took the option to work virtually, while other went to class. The groups that  were in class, had the aided help of Dr. Ackerman, to further fine tune any misunderstandings pertaining to the project. The groups were then left to work.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Week One WED 463

The  night sky of Trinidad and Tobago
    Interesting start to WED 463, classroom temperature made you wish you were on an island somewhere with cool tropical breezes blowing. Nevertheless we accomplished a significant amount of work on day one that compensated for day two.  We started the day with Dr. Ackerman "concerns of the class" questions and addressed each of the seven concerns that were noted, we then accomplished setting up blogging accounts using blogger,skype and wikispaces. One student demonstrated the use of the blogger, IM sites for the class complete understanding . The syllabus was also discussed in its entirety. Dr Ackerman is a very thorough professor, she even included a contract at the end of the syllabus to ensure students understood what they read. We ended day one with  setting up our groups, or catch up partners, and  the "AH HA moment"  comments, where each student was allowed the time to speak freely only when holding the cush ball, about what stood out to them about the day.
         Day Two due to the lack of heat in the bulding students were allowed to complete the take home assignments which were: an instrument critique and evaluation myths. Task to be completed, address the myths as to where you agree or disagree with what it stated, and provide an explanation  for your choice. The instrument critique, you read the questionaire, identified the flaws in each question on the questionaire, discuss the flaws with your team members and provide suggestions of how to revised the question. This was accomplished by either group member meeting at a convienent location or by using the new blogging, IM sites that were set up on day one.