EDUC 7726 Final Assignment - Summarizing My Learning

For our final assignment in EDUC 7726, we were asked to create a conceptual map of our learning from the class.  This could be done in a few different ways.  We could choose to summarize our learning from the class or relate our learning to future plans and how the program would be used in our future endeavors.  I chose to create a concept map that summarized the learning of the class as a whole.  I created this map using Coggle. Below is an image of my map:

The title/topic of my concept map was Assessing in the Digital Era.  I focused on the different ways to assess that we talked about in our EDUC 7726 class.  These different assessment techniques were:

• Technology and Assessment
• Symbiotic
• Visual
• Technical Quality
• Assessing Digital Literacy
• Assessing Digital Competencies
• Assessing MOOCs
• 21st Century Skills
• Summative and Formative Assessments
• Barriers to Technology

In the technology and assessment section of my mind map, I discuss symbiotic assessment, visual assessment, and technical quality.  Symbiotic assessments are purposeful, planned, and use multiple measure to assess students.  Symbiotic assessments provides and opportunity for teaching, learning and assessing to be interchanged.  With visible assessments, it is more student centered and students are aware of the methods, targets, and strategies.  The technical quality of assessments speaks to the validity, reliability, and fairness of the assessments used.

When assessing digital literacies and digital competencies, there are many important topics to consider.  Some of these are creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.

A new type of course that is being integrating is called a MOOC.  A MOOC is a massive open online course and there are many different considerations to assessing these types of courses.  The most recent have been peer assessments and automated grading systems.

One important topic that we briefly discussed this trimester was on 21st century skills.  21st century skills focus on critical thinking where students are asked to evaluate, synthesize, and analyze.  They also focus on problem solving where students are asked to reason, interpret, and apply.  They also focus on creativity, where students must be innovative and curious in their work.  Lastly, they focus on metacognition, where skills on mindfulness and reflection are focused on.

Two types of assessments that can be applies digitally are formative and summative assessments.  Formative assessments use a variety of different collaborative online tools.  These can be given at the beginning of class, middle of class or the end of class. Students can be given choices , such as project based learning.  Summative assessments typically end a unit.  Summative assessments can be done using a variety of technological tools.  Some tools can include: clickers, Google Forms, Socrative, etc.

The top barriers to technology integration are a lack of vision, lack of leadership, lack of money, curriculum, infastructure, parental involvement, time, and assessment.

I really enjoyed learning about different ways to assess through technolgy.  Throughout this course I learned many different techniques from my colleagues.  There are many different ideas that I plan to take away from this course and this program.

A link to my mind map can be found here: Assessing in the Digital Era Mind Map