John Mouracade
Here is the rundown on what I am doing differently this semester.
There are 4 different technological tools that I have implemented due to my experience at i-teach. Students in my philosophy of law class are blogging their reading responses. I am using Google reader to read and respond to the blogs. I have abandoned the digital dropbox and have set up all my students’ assignments through the assignment function on Blackboard. Additionally, I posted all of my assignments and exams at the beginning of the semester and used the adaptive release function to make the assignments available at the appropriate time.
The use of blogging and reader worked synergistically. As students posted their responses and analyses of the readings across cyberspace, I could pull them all in to google reader, accessing them through a central feed. This is easily the most convenient way for collecting and reviewing students’ assignments. In addition to the ease of grading and perhaps more importantly, the blog/reader system led to students being more creative and expressive. The blog format seemed to encourage students to write more. Without the MS Word pagination and word count going, students focused more on addressing the purpose of the assignment.
The switch to the assignment function and the adaptive release for assignments allowed me to streamline the processes for posting and grading assignments. Early in the semester, when the grading load was light, I posted the assignments for the entire semester and used the adaptive release to make the assignments available as scheduled in the syllabus. The assignment function also automatically created a grade book item for the assignments, thereby allowing me to skip a step I had been taking. Also, I could access completed assignments through the grade book. Viewing the assignment through the grade book has obvious advantages for the convenience of grading and entering grades through the same location.
Here are some links to student blogs:
http://kaylaoftheak.blogspot.com/2008/11/let-bartering-begin.html
http://khristyparker.blogspot.com/2008/11/law-as-interpretation-r-dworkin.html
http://tigers-lily.blogspot.com/2008/10/posner-and-pragmatism.html
http://lawsphilosophy.blogspot.com/2008/09/hart.html
November 16th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
John,
Did you encourage or require students to read, evaluate, and/or comment upon each others’ work? How did you arrange to teach them to use the technology? did you prepare tutorials? or did you assign the students to go to Googles’ tutorials.
Can you expand on the learning curve your students may or may not have experienced? And yours!
Terri