Linda Gordon

I have a pretty strong line of communication with my students and in some sections, they are active participants. My two frustrations are first the occasional section of a course that does not want to hold discussions, and second, the students who do not read directions. I have one very active course and another section of the same course with a totally different vibe. They do not like to discuss, and in breakout rooms there is often somebody who will not/cannot participate. It seems to be luck of the draw with the personalities in the classroom and the best I… >>>

Rubrics should be reasonable lengths. I was given, by a university, a 49 element rubric. There was no way that this was a useful tool. 

I tend to have a range of points for each criterion and now I am rethinking - does that make it too subjective? On the other hand, there are often "perfect" and "close to perfect" results that would seem to be different and need the range of points. I hate to pull 5 points just because of one small error. 

I use rubrics all the time, but a good reminder that they are not self-explanatory to the students and no matter how specific, should be explained. 

I would avoid using the words "assessment" and "evaluation" as different. The most common differentiation is between formative  and summative and I would argue that those are the concepts that hold the most weight in designing any form of assessment/evaluation. 

Students really rely on consistency and having your content organized in an LMS in a manner they can understand logcially is important. 

Facilitating interaction is challenging in the synchronous enviroment because students often have competing issues in their environment and may not want to activate a microphone at times. I need to offer the tools such as chat and discussion board to fill in the gaps I notice in discussion from some students. 

Currently our classes that were pushed online due to Covid are being held synchronously, however, the potential for synchronous work has been very helpful when students have run into changing work schedules and family needs during this complex time. It is clear though, that if I were to actually purposefully offer the class as an asynchronous class, I would have to modify it with different assignments and content presentation to ensure that the students engage asynchronously with the material to the same extent they do in my synchronous class. 

I certainly see quite a few teachers new to online (due to our current Covid-19 challenges) who are overwhelmed by technology. The enthusiastic ones are grabbing multiple tools all at once and that also becomes daunting to those who are more hesitant. Just because it exists, just because somebody else is using it, does not mean it is going to be the correct tool for your course or style. I would suggest that it is important to look for an LMS and learn to use it fully and add to it gradually exactly what you need to achieve your goals.… >>>

With this sudden shift to online due to Covid-19, many students are taking an online course for the first time. Their technology skills are very raw and they require a lot of support to be successful. One challenge is "seeing" what a student is struggling with. I have used Zoom and had them share their screen however I also had a student who could not figure out the share screen option either.