A Checklist Manifesto for Assignments?

Although the latest book by Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto, is still in my audible wish list until my next credit rolls into town, I wanted to share something that I'm trying out this week in class.

Using a Google Doc Form to accept student assignments.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFRRX3M4WEJ1ZmppUGlkT2JIQnBTRHc6MA

I think it will work because:

• Students submit links instead of documents, which can be easily entered into a text field.
• A built-in checklist helps make sure students met each requirement before submission

• This is based on the experience of taking off points for missing a smaller requirement, or one that maybe was not communicated optimally.

I already use Google Docs to record grades and although the data is spread across different spreadsheets, there is potential for integration between the various documents.

• I'm going to try and use the skip logic of Google Forms to create one assignment submission form for all assignments instead of creating one per assignment.

It's less error-prone than my previous method of using the FriendConnect comments box for submission because the comments are displayed in a weird order which is not good for processing submissions.

So far, so good, but we'll see after this week's assignment is due and I ask the students what they thought.

I recommend giving this a shot! You can check out a copy of the form here and see it in context of the assignment page here.

Already do something like this? Have an improvement suggestion? I would love to hear your thoughts! twitter.com/ethansen

Posted via email from shift Learning

How a 26-year old university professor spends class time

This website is used to facilitate an online class and a live class (studying new media and social technologies). All the students are part of a single online community powered by Google FriendConnect and aside from a few divisions to meet academic regulations, they are exposed to the same material.

For the online section, it's pretty standard. But the experiment with the live section has been going extremely well.

The constraint: 80 minutes of live class time, twice a week. No more (for difficult subjects like Google Analytics), no less (when more hands-on or individual time is necessary).

If, like me, you subscribe to the customer service model of higher education, the biggest constraint is providing value to students while butts are in seats -- at great expense. Compete with their laptops, internet connections, and the myriad external distractions flowing to them through this system... and you've got something.

Here's what I came up with.

1. Shorter lecture, or micro-lectures (hyphenate to taste): 20 - 40 minutes spent mostly narrating a rapid slideshow of photos and video (the subject of my generation's visual literacy being saved for a future post) to provide quick overviews at first, more depth second (A & B split across both days).

Problem this solves: death by powerpoint, reading from slides, subject matter inertia.

How it adds value: Presenting concepts and materials in a fun, visually engaging way, at an MTV-edited pace encourages curiosity in the subject, instant familiarity, and all without that weird "learning" aftertaste. Basically it's information transfer tuned to the learning style of contemporary students in a way that adds value.

2. Research Question Time!!! YOU HAVE 10 MINUTES to answer the related research question at the end of the micro-lecture. Post your findings as comments to the webpage for this module, cite examples with links, and respond to the findings of your class colleagues. Then another 10 - 15 minutes of discussion.

Problem this solves: gives students a reason to bring and use their laptops constructively; gets them "smart" on the subject quickly so they each have something to add to discussion; encourages collaboration and idea-sharing among students.

How it adds value: students create connections with one another's ideas (early-stage networking); subject matter comfort is fostered quickly; richer discussions often yield richer insights that can be internalized more deeply because students' own findings lead to the insights they're now internalizing after collective synthesis.

3. I'm here to help you with the week's exercise: remainder of class time (5 - 20 minutes). Some exercises are harder than others but instead of having separate "lab time" (why get together to work on computers in the same room when the interwebs can provide more convenience?) the remainder of class is dedicated to surfacing common questions and pitfalls for the current week's exercise.

Problem this solves: wasted "lab" sections where vast amounts of time are spent sitting quietly at locked-down lab computers, when that time could be spent doing more interesting things; and the mini summer vacation between the lecture and lab that can lead to grey-matter data loss.

How it adds value: within the same chunk of time, students get exposed to the subject/concepts, research them, discuss them, synthesize and internalize new insights from that research, and then BAAAM get hands on. This is as close to a learning experience microcosm I can create given the digital nature of the subject and without access to a school bus. Also, from a customer service standpoint, it's premium live help if technical hurdles arise.

:: Report Card

This regular rhythm helps set an expectation from class to class, is flexible enough to accommodate extended discussions or other ebbs and flows based on the module materials, and for the reasons above, adds an experiential value bonus point beyond the component parts.

It's nothing new, but I would hope it's nothing that couldn't improve a lot of crappy college classes.

What do you do to innovate within the constraints of classically defined and delivered "classes" at your institution? Or, if you're a student, what about this works well/ not well for your needs?

Thanks.

Eric

Welcome Students to Spring 2010!

Please contact me at ethansen at syr dot edu (SU students) or ethansen at illinois dot edu (Illinois students) with any questions.

Your first steps include:

1. Read through the syllabus and complete the deliverables at the bottom.
2. Take the entrance survey (Syracuse | Illinois).
3. And join the community for this website using the Google FriendConnect box on the right hand column of this page, or through the tool bar at the bottom.

Welcome and I look forward to our upcoming learning experience!

~Eric

New site & thoughts on the future of learning and course management systems.

If we're going to convince the academic world to follow our cutting-edge approach to learning architecture, then we need to use a cutting edge system for learning management.

That system is SquareSpace.

Over the course of the next 12 months, I will determine the strengths and improvement opportunities of the SquareSpace publishing system for use as a next-generation learning management system.

So far so good it's ridiculous. Things take one tenth the time, look twice as sharp and are hosted more reliably than anything I could have done independently.

As universities realize that they don't need computer labs and copious IT infrastructure to provide e-mail accounts that students are just going to forward to their gmail accounts, they concurrently develop a comfort with cloud-based and hosted solutions (software as service).

Why not do the same for your LMS? These options exist but are inelegant and are not ready to compete with the major players for a slice of the nearly $1 billion LMS market.

The SquareSpace interface/experience is what will win over educators and students who have suffered under the clunky interfaces and sluggish experience of the major vendors.

You heard it here first.