Assessment in microblogging enhanced coursesCarmen Holotescu Mirella Mioc Gabriela Grosseck

University Politehnica/ Timsoft University Politehnica West University Timisoara, Romania

11th WSEAS International Conference on

Data Networks, Communications, Computers Malta - Sept, 7-9, 2012

DNCOCO12

SOCIAL LEARNING becomes formal

The activity, participation and interaction of students on different social media platforms during courses cannot be assessed or marked by using traditional assessment strategies.

Also most university don't offer assessment procedures guidance related to identification, ownership, safety, privacy and recording-keeping of such Web 2.0 work produced for assessment.

RSS/blogs-2004, podcast–2005, vlog–2006, video–2007microblogging-2008-2012, augmented realitylocation based applications - 2010-2012

Web2.0 / social networks have great impact

in collaborative / social learning ( eLearning2.0 )

Enhancing teaching & learning using Social Media - from Handbook of Emerging Technologies in Education

George Siemens, Peter Tittenberg ltc.umanitoba.ca/wikis/etl

- the content can be collaboratively created not only with peers enrolled in the same course, but also with external learners and contributors, and can be distributed on different platforms too;

- each student' work has to be identified, also safety, privacy and recording-keeping have to be assured;

- issues of copyright and ownership have to be taken into account;

- peer and collaborative assessment have to be integrated.

Challenging factors for assuring quality assessment strategies and practices

JESS3 Labs The Geosocial Universe 2.0Comparison between the total amount of registered users

with the percentage of people accessing the sites via mobile http://jess3.com/geosocial-universe-2

1. Gray, K., Thompson, C., Sheard, J., Clerehan, R., Hamilton, M.., Students as Web 2.0 authors: Implications for assessment design and conduct. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 26, 2010.

2. Gray, K., Waycott, J., Clerehan, R., Hamilton, M., Richardson, M., Sheard, J., Thompson, C., Web 2.0 authoring tools in HE learning and teaching: New directions for assessment and academic integrity, 2010.

3. Tinoca L., Assessment 2.0, 2011. Presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/luistinoca/assessment-20-10291238.

Overview of the projects for Social Media assessment

MICROBLOGGING: What is it? And why should I care?

Microblogging is a new form of blogging, with brief text updates of 140 characters, via Web, SMS, email, IM or 3rd party applications, which allows

real-time interactions between users.

Microblogging is a collaborative technologyphoto: http://media2.lelombrik.net/13501-14000/13845.jpg

Diagrammr at diagrammr.com/edit?key=dy4NKMc8XsZ embedded in the note at cirip.ro/status/1644841

photo: http://www.heikkironkko.com/images/yolehti_jaiku.jpg

Microblogging platforms used in education

Mar 2006 Oct 2007 Jan 2008 Jul 2008Dec 2007 Mar 2008

Overview of the Microsphere Timeline

Sep 2008

4 platforms in Tops 100 Tools for Leaning 2009-2011: Twitter, Cirip, Yammer, Edmodo

Elizabeth Koh, An overview of microblogging, http://www.slideshare.net/elizabethkoh/an-overview-of-microblogging, slide 16

From Grosseck,Holotescu “Academic research in 140 characters and more” http://slideshare.net/ggrosseck

The most popular microblogging system

Launched in July, 2006

Robust, elegant and simple

More than 500 million users

Numerous mash-ups

Social Social networking networking

in 140 in 140 characterscharacters

twittertwitter

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124372363@N01/2417123304/sizes/o

Twitter educational uses:Classroom community

Collaboration

Project Management

Assessing opinion

Conference / research

Virtual classroom

Learning experiences

Personal Learning Network

Reference services

- 50000 users

- interface in Romanian, English, German

- Nominated by UNESCO Romania for "UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICTs in Education" - April, 2012

- Finalist at Seedcamp Zagreb, Jan 2010

- In Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

Cirip.eu - a microblogging platform specially designed for education; launched in March, 2008, by Timsoft, a Romanian company specialized in

eLearning and mobile applications

Facilities Cirip.eu (1)

• public and private groups (courses, internal training, projects, events, internal communication, service, family, hobby, etc);• group communication via SMS• polls, quizzes – online or via SMS• feeds monitoring via SMS / sites / blogs / social networks / search feeds• statistics, visualizations, tags.

Cirip.eu TUTORIAL

Facilities Cirip.eu (2)

social network around multimedia objects

multimedia objects embedded in messages (part of the communication flow, created/recreated, openess to (small) OERs - Weller, Martin (2010)): - livestreaming,

- images (flickr, tinypic),

- audio (eok, trilulilu, deezer, blip.fm, vocaroo, mp3),

- (live) video (youtube, dotsub, vimeo, screencastle, screenjelly, screenr,

220.ro, myvideo),

- presentations/learning design (slideshare, capzles, voicethread, flowgram,

photopeach, picasa,

notaland, prezi, diagrammr, mindomo, mindmeister, spicynodes),

- documents (odf, odt, pdf, doc, xls, txt, ppt, google docs/forms/spreadsheets)

information and knowledge managementcourses enhancementdelivering entire online courseslearning from the streamcollaborative projects in universitiescommunities of practiceePortfoliossocial LMS.

Personal Learning Environments ( Networks ) - PLE/PLN

Educational uses

Users

Feeds

Social networks

Learning contexts on Cirip.eu

Course elements:

announcements

modules - LOM/SCORM objects

collaborative exercises

learning from the stream

multimedia messages

Cirip as a social network of

msLMS (mobile social Learning

Management Systems)

polls/quiz/ comments via SMS (f2f)

validations - interactions with users/experts/

groups

Set of microblogging metrics on cirip.eu

For the formative and summative assessment of students activity and learning communities coagulation on microblogging platforms:

popularity: relation between the number of followers of a user and the number of messages sent

influence: based on number of followers and distribution of own messages (referenced or resent)

coagulation index: the covering / density of the network, the conversational coefficient, the reciprocity and the relevance

exposure index: set of the discussed elements, taking into consideration the topics approached by a person on her / his microblog

geographical distibution: analyses and exposes in a graphical form the signs of our online presence, thus practically drawing up a social map under continuous expansion, showing in detail the ways in which we interact and expose ourselves in a public space

temporal distribution: messages distribution on time

online social presence: type and quality of messages.

The Network section of a microblog offers information about the community developed around that user:

- the followees;

- the groups followed;

- the users who follow the current one.

The Network section of an user / group displays statistics, which facilitate the analyze on various research directions:

- the activity

- the relations formed

- the interests

- the means of participation

- the content of messages.

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilsingapore

ConclusionsThe integration of social media, in particular microblogging, in academic courses demands a new pedagogy of the teaching and learning process and a rethinking of student assessment. “It is not only about bringing into education a set

of new tools and technologies; it is about a change in the learning ethos. And the way in which such learning is assessed needs to be consistent with

this change in learning philosophy” [Summary report on the Workshop Assessing Learning in a Digital World. Online

Educa Conference Berlin, 2010]

The microblogging metrics defined for the Cirip.eu educational microblogging platform can be applied both for summative and formative assessment, and can be adapted for other microblogging applications used in education.

Thank you!

Carmen Holotescucirip.ro/u/cami13

twitter.com/cami13

Mirella MiocCirip.ro/u/mirella

Gabriela Grosseckcirip.ro/u/gabriela

twitter.com/ggrosseck