GauchoSpace's quiz feature

I think the quiz feature is currently my favorite GauchoSpace tool (although that might change as I experiment more with lessons). There's a lot you can do with it: I've created at least one quiz for just about every course I've taught, and for quite a few courses, I've made multiple or even weekly quizzes. I particularly like that you can include images, videos, and/or sound files: I think it makes the quiz more dynamic, and the multimodal aspect also makes it possible to test different kinds of knowledge. The image below, for example, is from a quiz I made for a hybrid course I taught last winter: 

The print is too small to see here (and is also in Spanish), but the question is: "According to Melissa [a person interviewed for a short reading students had completed], many Latin Americans are 'kind and friendly'. Which of these pictures contains people that are like that?" Students had to look at the images and decide which one best represented those concepts, both of which are vocab words introduced in that chapter. Option B is the only one with friendly, smiling people: the others are either cold or bullies. Based on which option students selected, I was able to provide them with customized feedback, which I really liked, and I could also quickly and easily pull up the results to see how people did: what the average was for first attempts vs final attempts, the mean class grade, how long each student spent doing the quiz, etc. 

Have you used GauchoSpace's quiz feature? How do you like it?

CBA? More like LOL.

I was a bit disappointed that the van der Kleij et al. article didn't find more substantial results. Computer-based assessment is something that figures fairly heavily into the classes I teach: much of the homework my students compete is via an online platform that has automated versions of some of the textbook activities. While there are some redeeming aspects of this platform--for example, there are animated grammar tutorials that students can watch (and that I can assign to make sure that they watch), and the videos are usually fairly well done--one of my biggest critiques is the quality of feedback students are given. When they get an answer wrong, they're told that they got it wrong, but they aren't told why. After they've exhausted their two allowed attempts, they're shown an answer key with the correct answers, but once again, they aren't offered any sort of explanation as to why their answer was incorrect, why the correct answer is the correct answer, and what they can do to improve moving forward. My "solution" to this has been to try to give them much more elaborated feedback on the homework they had in during class, and to give them credit for this homework based on completion rather than accuracy. This approach seems to have at least partially mollified my students, but honestly, my preferred way of fixing this would be to ax the online platform and use GauchoSpace to design my own activities. :D In a perfect world (read: in a world where I actually had the power to throw out part of the current course requirements and put in something that [I think] would work better), I'd do it in a heartbeat, but things like power and, of course, available time are currently not in my favor. :-/

What have your experiences been with CBA? Do you find the type of CBA offered to your students to be effective? If so, why? If not, what would you like to change about it?

Using Zoom for virtual classes

I was pleasantly surprised by how well our virtual class went: having taught with Zoom over the summer, one of the things I liked least about it was that it made doing think-pair-shares incredibly difficult to do (how on earth were students supposed to pair off and share ideas orally between themselves before sharing with the class?). I'm still trying to work out a solution to that for language teaching, but it seemed like the chat rooms and Google Docs worked reasonably well for our class, and we were able to have a good follow-up conversation afterward. The fact that Zoom allows for meetings to be recorded is also great for people who might not be able to make it to the meeting, students who might wish to review the material again, or even researchers who might like to analyze things like turn-taking and other facets of computer-mediated communication.

What did everyone else think? Would you consider using Zoom in your own classes (as instructors)?

Why do so many online platforms fail, and not even productively?

Productive Failure is my favorite of Vander Ark's eight principles of productive gamification. I've worked with a lot of different online platforms over the quarters, and even when the activities are decent, the feedback provided is usually terrible: most of the platforms will just tell students they got an answer wrong without telling them why, which is a really big pet peeve of mine. How are my students supposed to learn if they don't understand what they did wrong? The whole point of productive failure is that students are able to test hypotheses and receive feedback that then lets them modify their hypotheses as needed before trying again. If you're a student who is struggling with a brand-new concept, which is more helpful to you: the knowledge that you got an answer wrong, or the knowledge that you got an answer wrong and here's why and here's a tip to help you do better next time?  I understand that providing detailed and constructive automated feedback can be time consuming on the part of publishers, but if you're going to do something---and especially if students are going to have to pay to access that something---then at least have the decency to do it right.

Using Socrative in the classroom

I'm a big fan of Socrative. The classes I teach are usually fairly small (~20 students), but occasionally, I've had larger (~30 students) classes (I know the bio people are probably in hysterics over my calling 30 students a "large" class). When I have more students in the classroom, it's a bit trickier to get a quick feel of how well they're understanding the material, and it's also harder to make sure everyone is engaged in the lesson. To help remedy this, I started using Socrative in my larger classes (and occasionally in smaller classes where a tech survey reveals that all or nearly all of my students have some sort of device they could bring to class). My students seem to really like it: post-use surveys revealed comments indicating that students liked the anonymity and felt more comfortable taking risks when answering questions because they weren't as afraid of getting the wrong answer, and it was really helpful to be able to see in real time what they were and weren't understanding. Additionally, it makes it easy to turn any discussion into a task-based activity: I'd put students in pairs or small groups and tell them that they could only submit one answer per group, so they had to reach a consensus before submitting their answer. It's also really easy to use on my end and is dead simple on the students' end: they're able to use it easily from the first time, so I don't have to spend a lot of time "training" them how to submit answers.

Check out their website and click "watch demo" for a quick overview; alternatively, here's a detailed tutorial for those who are interested in learning more about how Socrative works.

Evaluating student participation through co-assessement

I've used co-assessment for several quarters for student participation, and I love it. The way it works is:

• there are two feedback modules on GauchoSpace: one in Week 5, another at the end of Week 10
• at each point in the quarter, students first evaluate themselves; they rank their participation on a 50-point scale, give themselves a specific score, then justify that score by checking off items they've done to deserve that score and adding additional comments if necessary
• I then review their scores and comments. If I agree with their score, I leave it as is; otherwise, I adjust it accordingly. 

The reasons I like this system are:

• it gives students a chance to reflect on their own performance and holds them accountable for it. In the Week 5 module, a lot of students mention their perceived shortcomings and state how they are going to make up for them in the second half of the course...and many of them do just that: they speak up more in class, come to office hours, etc. I think for some students, the mid-way point serves as a "wake-up call" that helps them do better in the second half of the course.
• students are generally satisfied with their grades. The grades they give themselves are usually very reasonable and in keeping with my own notes/perceptions, and in the event that a student is too hard on his- or herself, I make sure to give him or her a fairer score. 
• they do most of the "hard work" for me: all I have to do is look at the grade, decide if I agree, and move on to the next student. It takes less than 10 minutes per feedback module.

Does anyone else use co-assessment in their classes? If so, what have your experiences been? If not, is it something you would like to incorporate into your class, and how might you go about it?

Experimenting with Panopto/GauchoCast

I've tinkered around with Panopto/GauchoCast in the past, but I've never actually incorporated it into my teaching, so I'm excited to give it a go for this class. I think I'm going to see about preparing a Powerpoint and feeding that into Panopto so that I can play around with the finished product, and maybe I'll deliberately include a part that I'll want to edit out in "post" so that I can try out the editing tools. In terms of my topic, I was thinking about reflecting on some of the technological hiccups my students and I ran into in our online Spanish 1 course from this past summer: fortunately, things usually went well and without trouble, but we did encounter a few issues that took some patience and creativity to work around.

What are you guys planning to talk about in your videos? Have any of you used Panopto/GauchoCast before?