Authentic Learning and Authentic Assessment

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Implementing Authentic Activities in Website Designing

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Description Page

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1. Authentic activities have real world relevance. o Activities match as nearly as possible the real-world tasks of professionals in practice rather than decontextualized or classroom based tasks. 2. Authentic activities are ill-defined o requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity o Problems must be open to multiple interpretations rather than easily solved

o Learners must identify their own unique tasks and sub-tasks in order to complete the major task. 3. Complex tasks to be investigated over a sustained period of time. a. Activities are completed in days, weeks and month rather than minutes or hours, requiring significant investment of time and intellectual resources. 4. Authentic actives provide the opportunity for student to examine the task from different perspective using a variety of resources. b. The task affords learners the opportunity to examine the problem from a variety of theoretical and practical perspective. c. The use of variety of resources rather than limited number of pre selected references. d. Requires student to detect relevant to irrelevant information.

5. Authentic activities provide the opportunity to collaborate. o Collaboration is integral to the task, both within the course and the real world than achievable by an individual learner. 6. Authentic activities provide the opportunity to reflect. o Activities need learners to enable learners to make choice and reflect on their learning both individually and social. 7. Authentic activities can be integrated and applied across different subject areas. Activities encourage interdisciplinary perspective and enable diverse roles and expertise rather than a single well defined field or domain. 8. Authentic activities are seamlessly integrated with assessment. Assessment of activities is seamlessly integrated with the major task in a manner that reflects real world assessment. 9. Authentic activities create polished products valuable in their own right rather than as a preparation for something else. o Activities culminate in the creation of a whole product rather than an exercise or sub step in preparation of something else. 10. Authentic activities allow competing solutions and diversity of outcome.

o Activities allow a range and diversity of outcomes open to multiple solutions of an original nature, rather than a single correct response obtained by the application of rules and procedures.

Principle of effective Web Design

1. Dont make users think
The web-page should be obvious and self-explanatory.

2. Dont squander users patience o Try to keep your user requirements minimal. The less action is required from
users to test a service, the more likely a random visitor is to actually try it out.

3. Manage to focus users attention

o As web-sites provide both static and dynamic content, some aspects of the user interface attract attention more than others do. Obviously, images are more eyecatching than the text just as the sentences marked as bold are more attractive than plain text

4. Strive for feature exposure

o Letting the user see clearly what functions are available is a fundamental principle of successful user interface design

5. Make use of effective writing

o Talk business. Avoid cute or clever names, marketing-induced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names. For instance, if you describe a service and want users to create an account, sign up is better than start now! which is again better than explore our services.

6. Strive for simplicity

o From the visitors point of view, the best site design is a pure text, without any advertisements or further content blocks matching exactly the query visitors used or the content theyve been looking for. This is one of the reasons why a userfriendly print-version of web pages is essential for good user experience.

7. Dont be afraid of the white space

o Organize: provide the user with a clear and consistent conceptual structure. Consistency, screen layout, relationships and navigability are important concepts of organization. The same conventions and rules should be applied to all elements.

8. Communicate effectively with a visible language

o Organize: provide the user with a clear and consistent conceptual structure. Consistency, screen layout, relationships and navigability are important concepts of organization. The same conventions and rules should be applied to all elements

9. Conventions are our friends

o Conventional design of site elements doesnt result in a boring web site. In fact, conventions are very useful as they reduce the learning curve, the need to figure out how things work. For instance, it would be a usability nightmare if all web-sites had different visual presentation of RSS-feeds

10. Test early, test often

o Test not too late, not too little and not for the wrong reasons. In the latter case its necessary to understand that most design decisions are local; that means that you cant universally answer whether some layout is better than the other one as you need to analyze it from o very specific point of view (considering requirements, stakeholders, budget etc