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ONLINECOLLABORATIVEASSESSMENT
December 2008
Assessment of student online collaboration
This paper examines an emerging form of assessment – the assessment ofonline collaboration, using tools such as blogs and wikis. It seeks to addressthree questions: (1) Is online collaborative assessment educationally valid?;(2) What is current practice?; (3) What are the strengths and weaknesses ofcurrent practice?
Bobby Elliott, Scottish Qualifications Authoritybobby.elliott@sqa.org.uk
Online collaborative assessment
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Online collaborative assessment
ASSESSING STUDENT ONLINE COLLABORATION
WHAT IS ONLINE COLLABORATIVE ASSESSMENT?
Online collaboration is a topical issue. There are two main drivers for the current interest. One is the on-going societal change that is embracing new forms of working and socialising; the other is technologicalchange, characterised by the emergence of “Web 2.0”.As we move from an industrial society to an information one, soft skills relating to communications, teamworking and collaboration are replacing the traditional skills of craft, diligence and obedience. Education,too, is changing with the focus more on “deep learning” rather than memorisation of facts and figures.The concurrent emergence of Web 2.0 has facilitated these changes. The original web (Web 1.0) was apassive medium, where users consumed information; the new web is the “read/write web” (Gillmor, 2004),which facilitates user interaction and makes it easy to create and contribute information. There are a widerange of collaboration tools available. The main ones are e-mail, discussion forums, blogs, wikis, socialnetworks, VOIP, and virtual worlds. Although these services vary widely in their functionality, they allprovide an environment that supports communication and interaction between groups of users. Virtualworlds, such as
Second Life
, are the latest addition to the genre and their use is expected to growsignificantly within the next few years, with four in five Internet users predicted to use at least one virtualworld by 2011 (de Freitas, 2008).Online collaborative assessment is the assessment of activities that utilise these tools. Education(particularly Higher Education) is beginning to make use of these tools to support learning, and taking thefirst steps in assessing students’ work produced using these services. While there are clear parallelsbetween online collaborative work and traditional group work, this new environment is sufficientlydifferent to pose some fundamental questions about this emerging form of assessment.
VALUE OF ONLINE COLLABORATIVE ASSESSMENT
Employer demand for a more innovative, creative and collaborative workforce is well documented (see,for example,
21
st
Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness
, 2008). Universities have responded byseeking to produce graduates who can work in teams and collaborate (Hounsell,
et al
, 2007). The value ofcollaborative working goes beyond pragmatic vocational considerations. Collaborative learning is rootedin pedagogy, particularly the social constructivist theories of Vygotsky (1978) and the experientiallearning theories of Kolb (1984).
“With a constructivist framework, students are seen as active collaborators in thebuilding of knowledge. Learning takes place through interaction, existing in thetransaction between student and student, student and text, and student and teacher.”(Murphy, 1994)
1
http://www.secondlife.com
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Online collaborative activity fits this framework well. It is also considered a key way to improve teachingand learning:
“When asked to compare communication technologies, 52% of respondents state thatonline collaboration tools would make the greatest contribution in terms of improvingeducation quality over the next five years, the top response.” (Economist IntelligenceUnit, 2008)
Formative and summative use
Online collaborative activities can be used formatively or summatively. Collaborative activities done onlineare particularly suitable for formative assessment given the interactive nature of the medium, making peerand teacher feedback straight-forward. For example, e-mail is an excellent way to provide one-to-onefeedback; and the comment facilities in a blog make it straight-forward to give group feedback. In fact,online collaborative activities are well suited to all seven principles of self-regulation outlined by Nicoland MacFarlane-Dick (2006) but particularly the principles relating to teacher and peer dialogue, andself-assessment.Collaborative online assessment is also well suited to summative use. The student activities typicallyundertaken using Web 2.0 tools are generally authentic, being related to real-world tasks, and the skillsinvolved in collaborative online working foster lifelong learning skills. Such activities also engage learners,which increases student motivation. This engagement with authentic activities can reduce the “disjunction”between course objectives and assessment practice noted in several recent reports (see, for example, Elton& Johnston, 2002).
Quality of online collaborative assessment
Knight (2002) identified four characteristics of assessment: validity, reliability, affordability and usability.
“In 21st century learning environments, de-contextualised drop-in-from-the-skyassessments, consisting of isolated tasks and performances will have zero validity asindices of educational attainment.” (Pellingrino, 1999)
Online collaborative assessment scores highly in most of these. It is potentially a highly valid form ofassessment because it permits the learner to undertake engaging and authentic tasks that can closelymatch learning objectives; however, it faces the same reliability issues as traditional group work – maybemore because of its innovative nature; it’s affordable because of its use of commonly (and usually, freely)available Web 2.0 tools; and students generally enjoy using these tools and services. The issue of thereliability of collaborative online assessment is considered later in this paper.A characteristic not mentioned by Knight, but one that has important implications for online assessment, isfairness, given the long-standing complaints from students about recognising individual effort (or lack of)and penalising malpractice. Online collaborative assessment appears to be no better, perhaps worse, inthis regard than traditional group work.
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