Inquiry, Formative Assessment, and Student Learning Communities: Research Reflections Roundtable

Earlier this year, I wrote about the importance of listening to students and letting that inform our instructional design, learning activities, and mediums for assessment.  With that in mind, Susan Lester and I decided to utilize face to face conversation instead of a class blog or other virtual medium for students to share their research topics, challenges, successes, and questions up to this point in our Spring 2012 inquiry into war and veterans’ issues.  Students completed their research design proposals prior to our spring break on March 30 and received written and verbal feedback immediately after spring break; since then, they have been working on organizing their PLE dashboard and going further into their research after our initial pre-search period that helped them get to the point of submitting their research design proposal.

Our method was fairly simple:  we met in Susan’s room this past Friday, April 20 (the library was packed) and gave students about 5 minutes to reflect individually or with their research partners (some students are researching solo; others are working in small groups) on the following questions:

1. Share your topic and three big research questions with the group.

2. What are the best information sources you have found so far? Why? Share your top 3 at this point.

3. What are some of your research challenges? How have you dealt with them or what do you need help with?

4. What is your progress/status on locating and emailing an expert for an interview?

5. Which information dashboard are you using (Symbaloo or Netvibes)? How is that working for you? What have you added to it so far?

6. What questions or muddy points do you have for Ms. Lester or Ms. Hamilton?

We then gave every student an opportunity to share and discuss his/her responses to those six questions; if students worked in groups, they worked out among themselves who would discuss each question although most groups answered these collaboratively for each question.   Another benefit to the face to face sharing was that both students and teachers could ask each other for clarification when we didn’t fully understand what someone else had shared.  While the process was no-tech and seemingly simple, the results were powerful for students and for us as teachers.  Every person had an opportunity to have his/her voice heard–this communal sharing of ideas allowed us to all interact, pose questions, and provide support for each other in the moment of the discussion.   Because our students had previously shared they prefer face to face communication, we wanted to honor that, and quite honestly, I think this way of sharing was far richer for them than posting on a class blog.  While I’d love to eventually nudge them to sharing with a more global audience, our face to face sharing was a chance for them to hear about the work of their peers and to share within our immediate learning community.

For Susan and I, this research roundtable was a formative assessment that has given us these insights:

• We’re seeing patterns of common issues and challenges students were facing—right now, getting the right combination of search terms is a challenge for some of our researchers.  Consequently, I now have a schedule to provide some 1:1 “triage” to those students this week.  Now I can provide meaningful intervention for those who need it to get them “unstuck” in the inquiry process.
• We’re also seeing patterns of what students feel are the most helpful sources for different topics as well as sources that students might not be utilizing or need help navigating.   Students cited Gale Opposing Viewpoints, Academic Search Complete, SIRS Issues Researcher as their favorite databases; others shared they found SweetSearch and Google News to be valuable search portals for current news articles and informative and credible websites.
• We learned that students are now going back and rereading articles more closely when they feel they are having difficulty understanding the article or not initially finding the information they’re seeking in the first pass of the article.  We were heartened that they are demonstrating more resilience and persistence in this area and taking time to reread their resources more deeply rather than skimming, scanning, and abandoning the article.
• As expected, some students find Netvibes to be a more useful information dashboard while others prefer the streamlined feel of Symbaloo; this information was not surprising, but I think it was good for the kids to see that everyone has reasons for their choices, and that there is no “wrong” or “right” medium for organizing your PLE.  Interestingly, many students stated they liked working off their EasyBib lists and were utilizing it heavily as a “go to” tool on their information dashboard.  For the Netvibes users, most felt that once they got past the initial learning curve, they were especially happy with that choice; a couple of students felt extremely passionate about it, and one declared it to be “awesome“!

For me, the experience reaffirmed how much I love working closely with a specific class for an extended period of time–I love getting to know the students better as learners and as individuals; I also relish having chunks of uninterrupted time to really listen closely and have these conversations for learning.  Unfortunately, I’m spread too thin this year to do this kind of activity as much as I’d like.  I’m also grateful to work with teachers like Susan Lester who understand that inquiry takes time and who keep learning at the center of what we do by being open and receptive to these kinds of learning experiences.

Formative assessments like these go a long way in helping us improve our instructional design and to make adjustments in response to the needs of students.  I’ve said it before, but it is worth repeating that we see a higher quality of learning products and more positive movement on the learning continuum when we engage in sound, thoughtful instructional design and incorporate multiple formative assessments into the learning process.   Research experiences that lack these essential elements and don’t provide a healthy measure of ownership and choice pretty much guarantee poor work and/or rampant plagiarism.  This “research reflections roundtable” is one that can be adapted for any age group and can be a valuable learning experience for both students and teachers.  Best of all, it’s free, immediate, and easy to implement–all you need is time, space, an open mind, and an attentive ear!

Peer Review of Digital Research Projects, Spring 2011

We are in the final week of our digital research project that the Media 21 students have been engaged in now for about six weeks as they have investigated issues facing our veterans who have served or who are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We began the first of four days of peer review of the projects yesterday; each day, each collaborative research/inquiry group is assigned a fellow group to evaluate using the form embedded below.  Susan Lester, my co-teacher, and I are looking forward to reading student feedback and then debriefing the results of that feedback with each group (we will keep the individual feedback forms private so that students feel free to provide honest and constructive assessment/evaluation).

Are you incorporating peer review into any aspect of your research projects that you facilitate?  If so, how do you go integrate peer review as an assessment and reflective learning experience?

Creating Conversations for Learning: NoodleBib Assignment Dropbox as Formative Assessment, Part 2

CC image via http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcostin/464699844/sizes/m/

A few weeks ago, I composed a post about the possibilities of using the NoodleBib shared assignment dropbox feature as a formative assessment for evaluating working bibliographies and notecards.  Now that I’ve completed two research project “checkpoints” using the shared assignment dropbox, I am happy to share that this formative assessment has been successful in:

1.  Gaining insight into the selection of information sources by students and to help them identify gaps in sources they may be overlooking that could inform their research.

2.  Helping students identify and understand the mistakes they’ve made in the citation process and working with them to correct the entries.

3.  Seeing what students are doing really well with their notetaking skills and providing positive feedback while identifying areas of weakness and then engaging in a conversation for learning with the student by sharing strategies for tackling those “challenge” areas with notetaking skills.

My roles in facilitating these formative assessments included:

1.  Setting up the shared assignment dropboxes.

2.  Teaching students how to share an assignment and confirming I had received the assignments from each group.

3.  Taking the time to evaluate each group’s bibliographic entries and notecards while providing feedback.

4.  Keeping a spreadsheet of general notes for each group’s work and noting patterns in what students were doing well and common problems I saw in student work.

5.  Sharing my findings and notes with my co-teacher, Susan Lester, and then the two of us working together with groups to address challenges I identified through the formative assessment; in addition, I enlisted the assistance of students who were demonstrating specific skills in an exemplary manner to help peers on an “as needed” basis.

I love how easy it is to evaluate bibliographic individual entries and the accompanying notecards for each source cited in one screen.  All you have to do is log into your account, scroll down to the bottom of your project lists page, and then open a student project (which for these assignments, were collaboratively created lists for group research projects).  You can then click on “Bibliography” to access the bibliographic entries and accompanying notecards on one screen; you can then enter custom comments for each entry, and for the notecards,  you can compose custom comments or use a comment from the pre-existing database of notecard comments.  You can see when each entry and notecard were created as well as time/date of any revisions a student may have made.  Take a look at how easy it is to work with the interface in the screenshots below (please note student names have been removed to protect their privacy).

Figure 1: Bibliographic Entry Comments

Figure 2: Comments on Electronic Notecards

I absolutely love using the shared assignment dropbox for formative assessment of student work and using the feedback with students to initiate or sustain conversations for learning.  Here are a few features I’d suggest to make the shared assignment dropbox in NoodleBib even better:

• add the ability to message a group or comment on overall project
• add the ability for teachers and librarians to create their own banks of custom comments to both the notecards as well as bibliographic entries
• add a spellchecker on the teacher/librarian side to spellcheck comments
• add the ability for the librarian or teacher to “like” a student bibliographic entry or notecard (a la Facebook style)
• add the ability to create threaded discussions Facebook or new Google Docs discussions style so that students and the teacher and/or librarian can engage in a virtual discussion about the feedback provided (think ramped-up commenting!)

If you haven’t tried the shared dropbox in NoodleBib, I encourage you to give it a try as a way to embed yourself in the classroom with teachers and students as part of your collaborative partnerships and to participate meaningfully in assessment of student work.  If you have tried the shared assignment dropbox as formative assessment, what features did you like, or what enhancements would you like to see added for 2011-12?

NoodleBib Assignment Dropbox for Sharing Student Work and Formative Assessment

If you haven’t tried the electronic dropbox feature in NoodleBib/NoodleTools, check out my tutorial on how you can set up your own teacher/assignment dropbox and enable students to share their Works Cited list, notecards, and a Google Document associated with a project list with you and/or multiple teachers (wonderful for teacher and librarians to BOTH provide feedback!).  I see this feature of NoodleBib as a way to provide specific feedback to students and as a formative assessment tool for learning to use with students.

What would make this feature even better is if students could respond to the teacher feedback and/or have some type of commenting feature similar to what is in Google Docs to track conversations and feedback for learning–perhaps this will be a future enhancement?  While I’ve provided feedback on print copies of Works Cited lists and electronic notecards and assisted with the editing of student papers using the discussions and commenting features in Google Docs, I’ll be undertaking my first effort at collaborative electronic assessment using this feature next week with Susan Lester as our Media 21/Learning 21 students hit their first Works Cited/ notecard checkpoint this Friday, April 1; each group is working on a collaboratively constructed project in NoodleTools (see Chapter 6 in the NoodleBib guide under “student collaboration”), and each member of a collaborative project can see all feedback provided that Susan and I provide.  I’m looking forward to the process and listening to student feedback on how this method of formative assessment works for them once we return from spring break in mid-April!

Written instructions are provided in the NoodleBib Users Guide in Chapter 6 under “Sharing Projects” and “Teacher Instructions”; student instructions are provided in this chapter as well.

Group Reflections on 9th Grade Research: Presearching, Formative Assessment, Research Guides, and More!

Ms. Frost (English teacher), 9th Honors Literature/Composition students, Ms. Hamilton (librarian), Mr. Guyer (librarian intern), and Ms. Johnson (librarian) reflect on the recent research experiences at The Unquiet Library (see the research guide at http://theunquietlibrary.libguides.com/frost-9th. You can see the pre-search graphic organizer (which we have now condensed into a shorter document for future use!) on the research guide.