Bruce Wolcott – EDUC252 Learning Portfolio

Visual Storytelling (CMST115) Final Project Overview:
The Team Visual Storytelling Project

This overview is of a project for a course that I’m teaching in Fall 2011 called Visual Storytelling (CMST115). In this case, the activity is designed to be a final team project in which students demonstrate a variety of visual communications skills/concepts that are covered throughout the quarter. It is a capstone project that confirms to me and to the students whether they understand and can put into practice the key ideas that I’ve taught during the class. I’ll call this assignment the Team Visual Storytelling Project.

Final Project overview Prezi screencast . (No audio).

A Big Idea in Media Theory

Cartoonist and author Scott McCloud summarizes media communications as follows: “Media converts thoughts into forms that can traverse the physical world and be RE-converted by one or more senses BACK into thoughts.” McCloud’s statement distills my own commercial and academic interests. My specialty is media theory, which explores methods for shaping and conveying ideas using communications technologies. Voice, graphics, gesture, music, narrative, perspective, motion, lighting, color, text, style, and interactivity all play a role in orchestrating multisensory ideas.

The Web revolution is coming into full maturity. In this new arena, everyone is both a producer and receiver of information. My goal is not only to teach media production tools, but how to design ideas that are informative and entertaining. My intention for this final team project is to get students to discover production tools, create images, storyboard visual ideas, integrate text with pictures, synchronize sound, deliver relevant content – in summary, convert an existing concept into a form that can be published and transmitted using digital media. This project represents a delivery of the big idea as described by Scott McCloud – converting thoughts that can traverse the
physical world and be RE-converted by one or more senses BACK into thoughts.

The learning outcome for this project can be stated as follows: Students will be able
to create a 2 to 8 minute online screencast that incorporates a selection of visual storytelling and information design principles that were discussed during the quarter.

Project Description (for students)
Your goal is to create a 2 to 8 minute online screencast that incorporates a selection of visual storytelling and information design principles that we’ve discussed during the quarter. The topic and content of this screencast is up to you. However, each project must a) convey one easily identified core concept or idea b) demonstrate a consistent style (look and feel), c) tell a visual story using text and images (audio is optional) d) create a message design with a pre-determined target audience in mind. You can use photographs, video, digital graphics, or hand rendered artwork. I will be looking closely at how well your screencast communicates your core concept or idea. You must use one of the following screencast applications for final project delivery: Impressr, SlideRocket, Prezi, Google Presentations, Jing, or Powerpoint (Office Online).

Student created Prezi screencast describing the final project process. (No audio)

Skills and Concepts needed to Solve the Problem

Since this project takes place at the end of the quarter, the process of completing it is intended to weave together various strands of visual narrative skills and concepts that were covered in earlier weeks. Rather than demonstrate all of the principles/skills covered during the quarter, I’m asking students to choose seven of these from a larger list of possibilities. In a summary document, they must explain how and where they used each of these concepts that were chosen from this list.

Each project must make deliberate use of at least seven of the storytelling and information design approaches listed here (choose any 7 from these lists that you will explain in your summary):

Narrative Devices:
Central dramatic question, continuity device, status, character, exposition, conflict, raising stakes, foreshadowing, universal theme.

Visual Storytelling:
Closure, first person narrative, third person narrative, use of word balloons to convey contextual meaning, multiple camera perspectives, symbolic conventions, transitions (moment-to-moment, aspect-to-aspect, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene).

Composition:
Leading lines, rule of thirds, symmetric balance, asymmetric balance, PARC (proximity, alignment, Repetition, Contrast).

Styles: Identification and application of one of the following graphic styles: Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Constructivist, Bauhaus, Dada, Expressionist, Pop Art, Op Art.

                Time: Alternate worlds, eternal now, multiple perspectives, recursive time, time acceleration/deceleration,
paused/frozen time.

Information Design:
More with lessing, present something new relative to something previously understood, efficient implementation of data ink, Location, Alphabet, Timeline, Category, Hierarchy (relative feature comparison).

Activities Used to Build Narrative Skills

Throughout the quarter, students complete a variety of projects and post their observations and assessments either on Diigo or their class blog.

In order to prepare for a final project, students will become familiar with a series of core concepts that will need to be followed in order to successfully deliver a central message via an online screencast. These skills include the following: the principles of narrative and visual language, storyboards, comic layout and design, use of metaphor/analogy/icon/simulation, typography and graphic styles, information design fundamentals, delivery of Web content, and use of online screencast applications to deliver content.

These concepts will be introduced using a sequential series of projects and course assessments (CATS).

Items in green
indicate assessments for the instructor to see how well students understand concepts/skills

Items in blue
indicate assessments to allow students to judge whether they understand concepts/skills

• Background Knowledge Probe. Students will fill out a Google survey at the beginning of the quarter that will indicate the current level of knowledge about visual storytelling and other forms of narrative design. This information will be used to determine areas of expertise, and later assign teams and plan projects.
  
• Design your ideal day. Students are introduced to the idea of design by describing their ideal day in terms of life style, work, relationships, routines. This exercise is presented as the most important design decision in everyone’s life, based on Saul Wurman’s exercise. Students will post this written project to their blogs during the first week of class.
  
• Metaphor, Analogy, Icon, Simulation.
  Outside of class, students view TED talks by James Geary and Jill Bolte Taylor, and write a short summary of key ideas. Students will post this to their personal class blog.
  
• Storyboard Project. Professional storyboard examples are reviewed in class. Students complete a four panel storyboard project, based on a provided template that completes a “dramatic beat” and delivers a short narrative concept. It should indicate instructions for voice-over, music, camera positions, and movement within each frame. Students will send a scanned version or file to the instructor via email. These will be evaluated by the instructor, and number of these will be selected for class review/critique on the class Diigo site.
  
• Two Page Comic Book. Visual language principles are presented in class from movies, comics, and video games. Numerous examples of previous student comic projects are discussed. Students complete a two page project – some of which are selected for class presentations and review/critique. Students will send a scanned version or file to the instructor via email. These will be evaluated by the instructor, and number of these will be selected for class review/critique on the class Diigo site .
  
• Graphic Styles Discussion. Following a section on graphic styles (Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Bauhaus, Constructivist, Expressionism, Pop Art, Op Art), students are given an online quiz, where they must identify various art styles based on their characteristics – followed by an online discussion, once results are in.
  
• 
  Information Design Principles. The principles of information architecture and design are presented, showing numerous examples of how complex topics can be represented simply. Students are shown an interactive multimedia CD called “A Passion for Art” and must be able to identify the following information organizing principles: Location, Alphabet, Timeline, Category, and Hierarchy.
  
• Website Review and Analysis. In this project, students choose one website from a selection of different sites. They evaluate them based on information design principles presented in class. Results are posted to individual blogs.
  
• Online Screencast Application exercise. Students are provided with some images and text content and are instructed to create a short “pilot screencast” using one of the following applications. Impressr, SlideRocket, Prezi, Google Presentations, Jing, or Powerpoint (Office Online). Students discuss their experiences, and show results with links to these mini-projects on Diigo for class discussion and comment.
  

Student Metacognitive Activity
By the final weeks of the quarter, students will have the necessary learning “scaffolding” through this series of formative (CATS) assessments, which enables them to complete a final team project using fundamental principles of visual storytelling and information design. As part of their grade for the final project, students must also submit 1) a team evaluation on a provided template that reviews the involvement and participation of other team members, and 2) a self-assessment that reflects the student’s learning path towards completion of the final project.

Final team project rubric for CMST 115: Visual Storytelling class.

Overall, it seems to me as if the theme for Module 8 has to do with institutional assessments. In other words, what assessment strategies inform colleges, universities, and K-12 schools how well they’re delivering educational experiences to their students. Posted in this module’s materials are links to some relevant information.

1. The first institutional learning evaluation tool is the Levels of Assessment template that provides a scaled overview of learning that occurs on the following levels: General education program, individual student learning across courses, an individual course, and a specific section within that course.
2. The Lumina Foundation Degree Qualifications Profile, which shows rubric descriptions and charts of how learning in following areas compares for Associates, Bachelor’s, and Master’s degrees: Applied Learning, Intellectual Skills, Civic Learning, Integrative Knowledge, and Specialized Knowledge. The relative emphasis on each of these categories varies from school to school.
3. The Tuning Europe and European Qualifications Framework is looking to find common assessment criteria for European Union countries and has developed standards in a variety of disciplines including music, math, education, and social science. Interestingly they aren’t looking for absolute uniformity, but are looking for assessments that provide lots of leeway for interpretation by different cultures and individual instructors. This is dramatically unlike the “Leave No Child Behind” (for K-12) initiated by the Bush Administration, which tried to implement a uniform testing and assessment program for schools across the United States.
4. The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities has developed a set of assessment standards for institutions of higher learning in Washington State for the following purpose: <i>…the institution demonstrates the potential to fulfill its mission, accomplish its core theme objectives, and achieve the intended outcomes of its programs and services, wherever offered and however delivered. Through its governance and decision-making structures, the institution establishes, reviews regularly, and revises, as necessary, policies and procedures that promote effective management and operation of the institution.</i> This is the set of guidelines followed by Bellevue College.

Educational theorist Richard Alum of New York University recently has portrayed a dire set of circumstances regarding the current state of higher education in the United States. He claims that according to his own studies, students don’t learn anything in their first two years of college; 36% of students don’t move up on this indicator after four years. He also says that average student study time has dropped in half, from 25 hours to 12 hours a week over the past two decades. Recently, as a way to address this problem, over 300 colleges and universities have agreed to assess the learning of their students from freshman to senior year, and to make that data public. They’ve agreed to assess their programs and will work to improve them, based on the results. This has been called the Voluntary System of Accountability. His solution is to bear down more strongly on reading, writing, and testing outcomes – and insist on institutional accountability.

My question for Richard Alum is this: how does he expect to retain those students who are dropping out because they think their experience in school is boring and irrelevant? I’m not sure what the answer is, but we need teaching that brings students out of a passive, under-motivated, underachieving role. Web technology is now making possible direct connections with leading experts around the world, interactive learning environments, collaborative learning, and evolving forms of real-time formative assessments and evaluations. We also need motivated and adaptable teaching approaches that more effectively engage students in their own learning process.

This week, I’ve been planning for my final class project, and will continue to focus on my Visual Storytelling (CMST 115) class that I’m teaching in Fall 2011. This will be made up of ideas that I’ve been organizing all quarter and published onto my EDUC252 blog site. After completing the last module, I realized that I’d missed explaining in detail how students will assess their learning for their final team project, I will definitely need to include that missing piece for my wrap up assessment project for ECUC252. This learning assessment is built into my final team project description. I intend to present my final project online, using Prezi and Camtasia screencast applications with narration.

John Bransford is a well known educational theorist (now at the University of Washington) who established an experimental learning center at Vanderbilt University in the 1980’s and 1990’s. He and his colleagues established a set of teaching principles that are community-based and learner-based. His work has significance for the Module 7 theme – learner-based assessments – because it puts the emphasis on students stepping up to the plate to organize and manage their own learning process. Here’s a short version of his main concepts – summarized directly from the Vanderbilt website. These are derived from a paper Bransford wrote called How People Learn.

Environments that best promote learning have four interdependent aspects – they focus on learners, well-organized knowledge, ongoing assessment for understanding, and community support and challenge.

Learner-centered:
Learner-centered environments pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the educational setting. Teachers must realize that new knowledge is built on existing knowledge-students are not blank slates. Therefore, teachers need to uncover the incomplete understandings, false beliefs and naïve renditions of concepts that students have when they begin a course.

Knowledge-centered:
Teachers are wise to point their students directly toward clear learning goals-to tell students exactly what knowledge they will be gaining, and how they can use that knowledge.

Assessment-centered:
What are needed are formative assessments that provide students with opportunities to revise and improve the quality of their thinking and understanding.

Community-centered:
Community-centered environments foster norms for people learning from one another, and continually attempting to improve.

Bransford’s work is part of an overall paradigm shift away from the traditional autocratic classroom, to a learner-centered approach, where students are taking more responsibility for their own learning and organization of a knowledge base (ie. learning portfolio), that most closely matches their needs and goals. This is a fundamental kind of expertise required for careers of life-time learning with ongoing adjustments to an environment of continual change.

As futurist Alvin Toffler said way back in 1970 in his book Future Shock: “The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Another student-centered evangelist is Alfie Kohn who Time Magazine described as “perhaps the most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades and test scores”. In a recent presentation, Kohn takes up on many of John Bransford’s ideas, by saying what is needed is a “shift from a
doing to school to a working with school”.

A doing to school has the following characteristics:
An emphasis on measuring and contolling student behavior – the objective is compliance: “The stuff you can see and measure.”
The use of bribes and threats
Uniformity versus freedom of choice
An emphasis on competition over collaboration
Kohn said a doing to school experience is “good training for the citizen of a totalitarian society”.

A working with school has the following characteristics:
Long term thinking: What are our long term goals in terms of our students?
Encouraging student autonomy, a sense of belonging, and competence in things that matter to the learner

Thinking is meaningful and engaging – versus a memorization of facts and rote procedures.
The relationship with individual students is caring rather than distant or neutral.
Rather than asking students to comply, asks them what they need

Learner-based assessments and the development of “work in progress” learning portfolios is another essential ingredient of working with teaching.

How do student-based assessments work?

Karl Wirth of Macalester College in his article Toward a Metacurriculum of Metacognition talks about the importance on helping students become “intentional learners who are purposeful, self-aware, and self directing”. There are several methods Wirth recommends for having students become aware of their learning goals as well as their learning styles through practicing “metacognition”, or systematic relflections on their own work.

Here are some of Wirth’s metacognitive recommendations:

• Online journals to give students the opportunity to describe their own learning process.
  
• “Reflective wrappers”, or summaries of exams and papers that give students a chance to review how they might’ve
  
• Completion of knowledge surveys, which are used to guide student learning and complete self-assessments
  

Wiki Articles: I’ve found another useful approach is having students summarize team projects with an article posted on a class wiki, that highlight key talking points and provide supplementary support for their ideas. These in turn can be reviewed, edited or augmented by other students.

Self Monitoring: Where a student monitors or comments on his/her actions while completing a problem solving procedure.

Finally, there’s the proof in the pudding kind of assessment in which completed projects themselves, represent a form of student-based assessment. The student demonstrates their abilities by way of a project that can in turn, become part of a self-renewing learning portfolio. These can take the form of:

A screencast published online

A live performance documented on videotape
A published lab experiment or finding

A play or docudrama

Each of these kinds of final projects can be reviewed after completion.

Karl Wirth sums up the value of student-based assessments by saying:
“Making students metacognitively aware makes a difference, and the evidence is mounting that teaching students how to think about their thinking can transform our teaching and student learning.”

Student-based Assessments in my Visual Storytelling course

For my Visual Storytelling class (CMST 115), I’m planning to test the waters with some simple student self-assessment questions and practices. At the end of each Assignment, I’m going to have students write up a brief self-assessment of their work by asking the following:
1) What portion(s) of this assignment was most challenging?
2) What were the most important take-away ideas you derived from this project?
3) If you had to do this assignment over again, what would you change to make it better, if anything?

To start off with, the idea of student-created rubrics and assessments is new territory for me. It makes sense, but it also creates some feelings of uncertainty in terms of how I actually pull this approach off in a course. In my mind I’m thinking both in terms of a live classroom experience as well as an online situation. I believe that doing this in an online course will be fairly straightforward because of all the Web2.0 tools that are available to augment building rubrics and assessments. I’ve used the Survey Monkey and Google Survey tools in previous classes, and they seem to be a natural point of departure for carrying out this kind of rubric-building work, that students can review. Diigo, blogs, or possibly a wiki might work well to making this a collaborative activity. Part of my reluctance has to do with my needing to give up the security of being the sole “Arbiter of Assessment” – it’s not just giving up authority in the traditional classroom sense, but also having to be open to change and adapt to ideas proposed by students. This is the same feeling I get when I begin wading into a lake in early summer, deciding when I’m actually going to take the full body plunge. After some initial discomfort – getting used to the cold water – I actually enjoy the sensation, and feel invigorated. That’s what I’m experiencing here – a similar reluctance to leave the security of my current situation to face uncertainty and discomfort.

For Module 6, I’m engaging with the following instructions:
The main part of your blog posting for this module is to design classroom assessments (CATS) to monitor student understanding/ability to do skills needed to complete work on an ill-structured problem.

To begin, I’m going to quickly review my proposed final project for my Visual Storytelling (CMST115) class which I’ll be teaching in Fall, 2011. This is more completely developed in my Module 3 blog posting. Secondly, I’m going to detail the assignments along with follow-up discussions and class exercises that will enable students to successfully complete requirements for the final team project.

1. A Big Idea in Media Theory

This project represents the delivery of a big idea as described by comics theorist Scott McCloud. All forms of communication involve converting thoughts that traverse the physical world and are RE-converted by one or more senses BACK into thoughts.

2. Learning Outcome

The learning outcome for this final team project can be stated as follows: Students will be able to create a 2 to 8 minute online screencast that incorporates a selection of visual storytelling and information design principles that were discussed and learned during the quarter to deliver one central idea.
This is an ill-defined project in that students will have to identify their target audience, message, content structure, and method of delivery by specifically making use of information design and narrative principles learned throughout the quarter.

3. Formative Assessment projects/exercises assigned in preparation for the final project

In order to prepare for a final project, students will need to become familiar with a series of core concepts that will need to be followed in order to successfully deliver a central message via an online screencast. These skills include the following: the principles of narrative and visual language, storyboards, comic layout and design, use of metaphor/analogy/icon/simulation, typography and graphic styles, information design fundamentals, delivery of Web content, and use of online screencast applications to deliver content.

These concepts will be introduced using a sequential series of projects and classroom assessments (CATS).

These include:

• Background Knowledge Probe. Students will fill out a survey at the beginning of the quarter that will indicate the current level of knowledge about visual storytelling and other forms of narrative design. This information will be used to determine areas of expertise, assign teams and plan projects.
  
• Design your ideal day. Students are introduced to the idea of design by describing their ideal day in terms of life style, work, relationships, routines. This exercise is presented as the most important design decision in everyone’s life, based on Saul Wurman’s exercise. Students have 20 minutes to complete the exercise, followed by a class discussion.
  
• Metaphor, Analogy, Icon, Simulation.
  Outside of class, students view TED talks by James Geary and Jill Bolte Taylor, and write a short summary of key ideas. Discuss in class, turn in assignments.
  
• Storyboard Project. Professional storyboard examples are reviewed in class. Students complete a four panel storyboard project, based on a provided template that completes a “dramatic beat” and delivers a short narrative concept. It should indicate instructions for voice-over, music, camera positions, and movement within each frame. Following completion of the project, a number of students are selected to present their storyboards for class review/critique.
  
• Two Page Comic Book. Visual language principles are presented in class from movies, comics, and video games. Numerous examples of previous student comic projects are discussed. Students complete a two page project – some of which are selected for class presentations and review/critique.
  
• Graphic Styles Discussion. Following a section on graphic styles (Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Bauhaus, Constructivist, Expressionism, Pop Art, Op Art), students are given a pop quiz, where they must identify various art styles based on their characteristics – followed by a discussion, once results are in.
  
• 
  Information Design Principles. The principles of information architecture and design are presented, showing numerous examples of how complex topics can be represented simply. Students are shown an interactive multimedia CD called “A Passion for Art” and must be able to identify the following information organizing principles: Location, Alphabet, Timeline, Category, and Hierarchy, in a follow-up in-class discussion.
  
• Website Review and Analysis. In this project, students choose one website from a selection of different sites. They evaluate them based on information design principles presented in class. Results are discussed after completion.
  
• Online Screencast Application exercise. Students are provided with some images and text content and are instructed to create a short “pilot screencast” using one of the following applications. Impressr, SlideRocket, Prezi, Google Presentations, Jing, Animoto, or Powerpoint (Office Online). Students discuss their experiences with these applications in class.
  

By the final weeks of the quarter, students will have the necessary learning “scaffolding” through this series of formative (CATS) assessments, to enable them to complete a final team project using fundamental principles of visual storytelling and information design.

While we lingered awhile longer on Summative versus Formative assessments, I thought it was very useful, especially three links to short but very informative destinations – the Classroom Assessment Techniques by the Schreyer Institute, the Formative or Self-Regulating Learning site at Wikipedia, and Pearson’s interview with education theorist, John Seely Brown.

All of these links bring back a quote that I read a few months back by John Holt, who says: “The biggest enemy to learning is the talking teacher.”  I think this is the biggest struggle and challenge for me.  How to create learning environments where the students take on engaging learning challenges without my having to fill the classroom time with my talking.  I’m getting better, but I still have a lot of room for improvement. The formative, interactive assessments are pointing me in the right direction.

Module 5 is concerned with identifying differences between summative and formative assessments, as well as developing a rubric for a class assignment. A number of guiding questions posed by Robin along with my associated answers are included. I’ll begin with these questions and finish up with a first draft rubric for a final team project which I’ll be using for my Visual Storytelling CMST 115 class during Fall Quarter, 2011.

Why do Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (1998) say that “frequent short tests are better than infrequent long ones”?

In their article Inside the Black Box, Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment, and in other online publications, Black and Wiliam offer a number of suggestions for gaining immediate feedback from students – both to let the instructor know how well he/she is delivering course material, and also to reinforce student engagement and retention. Many of these might not be considered “tests” in the formal sense, since they’re looking for immediate student feedback, and aren’t necessarily weighted with an associated grade. They include:

• Discussions: Students can break up into groups and present their conclusions, propose and then vote on various answers/solutions, write down answers that can be read back in class, debate a topic by taking on an affirmative or negative position.
  
• Exercises: Students complete a “before and after” evaluation of an concept, answer pop quiz questions, interact with the instructor as they work in groups to resolve a problem, write a brief essay regarding a class topic or to summarize presented content, write down 3-4 “take-away” ideas regarding a course topic.

Black and Wiliam are big supporters of formative learning, and advocate shorter tests (see listing above) that take place soon after the teaching takes place, rather than waiting for a mid-term or final exam where students cram-review information and don’t necessarily retain it afterwards. They say that newly gained knowledge should be tested within a week of a student’s first exposure to it. Also portfolios of student assignments/projects can be collected over time, dated and annotated by the instructor to demonstrate growth in learning. According to them all of this leads to greater retention of information and new skills.

One of the best descriptions I’ve found that differentiates a capstone project from a portfolio comes from the Student Guide to Capstone Portfolio (2009), published by Western Washington University.

– “The portfolio is the property of the student, and is largely student-driven… Each student selects the specific information to be included and…incorporate documentation beyond the program requirements. Students are encouraged to be creative in the collection and presentation of information.”
– “In the capstone… students are required to complete a culminating assignment that demonstrates their academic and professional depth. This assignment is unique to the student, and may be done in written, Internet, video or combined formats.”

PORTFOLIO:

In the Digital Media Arts program where I teach at Bellevue College, the portfolio is emphasized as the primary way media students will be able to sell themselves to employers after they finish the program. The portfolio consists of a representative sampling of the student’s best work – and can be displayed using a variety of media; writing, photography, illustration, videography, music, etc. From the very beginning, students are told that they should consider their portfolio to be more important than their certificate or degree, since a piece of paper means nothing if you can’t execute the media creation skills required by future employers. Employers will always look to your portfolio before making a decision to hire. The portfolio is also seen as a work in progress – always in need of updating and re-editing.

One of the guest presenters to my Game Theory class was Paolo Molabuyo, an experienced game designer who led the Microsoft Xbox 360 design team. He said that his portfolio was never static, but in a continual state of change, despite his many years of education and work experience. It’s a reflection of his current state of expertise and knowledge. In the commercial media field, maintaining a portfolio is a lifetime process, many times beginning with a student portfolio. In summary, the portfolio is a formative assessment tool, that’s maintained by the student. The portfolio is ideally suited for media students, who will always need be able to demonstrate that they can “walk the talk” in terms of their salable skills.

CAPSTONE PROJECT:
In the Visual Storytelling course that I teach at Bellevue College, I complete the quarter with a capstone project in which students must demonstrate their understanding of a variety of storytelling, information design, and technology issues. This project is described in my Module 3 post and engages students in demonstrating skills and concepts that they’ve learned during the quarter. The learning outcome is described as follows: Students will be able to create a 2 to 8 minute online screen cast that incorporates a slection of visual storytelling and information design principles that were discussed during the quarter. Unlike the portfolio, a capstone project is a one-shot deal in which the student demonstrates his/her understanding and implementation of learned concepts during a given duration of coursework. Hence, the capstone project is a
summative assessment. The capstone is ideally suited for situations where students are required to actively demonstrate their understanding of course curricula by delivering an end of the quarter project.

I’m actually a big fan of Sid White’s approach to project-based learning, and it has influenced my own teaching. Hands on experiences always trump lectures in terms of long-term retention. I’ve been using my own form of rubrics, but will convert to Robin’s recommended approach since I think they’ll be a big time-saver in the long run – they provide a clean and concise way to measure performance.

I wasn’t quite sure how to approach this question, but here are a couple of my thoughts.
a) Following along the lines of Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam regarding small and frequent assessment exams – rubrics could be designed to map smaller and more quickly acquired skills to a point assignment. For example in visual design, the color wheel represents a somewhat challenging concept – incorporating its own vocabulary (ie. luminance, contrast, saturation, RGB, CMYK, tint, hue, etc.) This information, which is a subset of color theory, would make an excellent candidate for developing a rubric, specific for this territory. This is good feedback for students to receive on the way to achieving a broader understanding of how color applies to information design and storytelling.
b) The same rubric could be applied to a “before and after” scenario – where students could assess their current understanding of a topic, and then re-assess after a topic was studied more in depth and in a “hands-on” scenario. For instance, in the example given above, learners could evaluate their understanding of color theory before they completed a hands-on exercise, with only a theoretical introduction to color theory, and then afterwards after they explored the same ideas through a hands-on problem solving exercise.

    As I began working through the guiding questions for this module, I thought I’d gained a pretty good understanding of formative versus summative assessments in the last module. However, I’m glad we spend a second week looking at these concepts because there were some more discoveries I made regarding them. First of all, I found a lot of useful information coming from Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam regarding various classroom-based formative assessments. It seems that they advocate some kind of quick review, discussion, or exercises designed to firm up newly acquired knowledge – a one week pause between the introduction of a concept and a “test”. They say the cramming process involved with a mid-term or a final exam doesn’t readily promote long term retention. It also reconfirms to me the value of these short, low grade impact assessments in letting me know how well I’m teaching. It keeps students from drifting too far from the important matters at hand.

    Another unexpected surprise came while I was evaluating the difference between a portfolio and a capstone project. The portfolio is a formative assessment carried out over the course of a career (in the case of media students). The capstone project (such as the one I have used for my rubric example) is a summative assessment which
measures knowledge gained over the course of a course section, quarter, or semester. I had tended to one term interchangeably with the other.

    When looking at my own experiences with summative assessments, I was reminded of a favorite professor of mine at Evergreen State College who strongly believed in hands-on competencies as a form of embodied learning. As I described earlier, he spent WAY too much time providing customized evaluations without the benefit of a handy-dandy rubric.

    Finally, the formative rubric gave me some pause for thought. What would make this any different than a summative rubric? I assumed this is one of those “ill-defined” situations, so I gave it my best shot.

Assessments

Module 4 is concerned with identifying and defining some fundamental assessment concepts. Based on my online research, as well as a review of other class blogs and Diigo posts – shown below are my current interpretations of these concepts.

1. What distinguishes summative from formative assessment?
   

A SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT is designed to test and evaluate student learning at the completion of a pre-determined time (end of a course section, completion of a lab, final exam on the last day of a semester/quarter, etc). Ideally, this kind of assessment demonstrates both the effectiveness of the course design to the instructor as well as the student’s level of understanding. It’s an assessment that measures a collective gain of knowledge/understanding for a given topic area over a specific span of time.

A FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT provides on-going feedback for the learning process in the form of observations, immediate feedback, quizzes, discussions, in-class exercises, and Q&A. One simple example of this is reading the facial expressions of students in a classroom to see if they’re puzzled or “getting” an idea. If an instructor sees student with a puzzled expression and asks if he/she needs a clearer explanation, this is a type of formative assessment.

EXAMPLE OF FORMATIVE VERSUS SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS:
During the summer of 2010, I had an interesting experience teaching an online course for students at the University of Tasmania, which has an educational model based on a traditional British academic structure. The course is called the Fundamentals of Interactive Entertainment, which is all about interactive technologies, feedback, and engaging human attention through continual decision making. Video games and real-time simulations are designed from the ground up to provide a constant array of challenges and corresponding problem solving. If you don’t succeed using one approach, you try another, again and again until you succeed. Playing a video game is a perfect example of formative learning. Consequently my Interactive Entertainment class is set up to be strongly interactive, involving numerous quizzes, projects, and exercises with feedback taking place during our live online class sessions as well as outside the classroom space.

The interesting dilemma is that traditional British (and European) university systems place a strong emphasis on the final exam, which usually accounts for 90%-100% of a student’s grade – the ultimate summative assessment(!). Fortunately, my department chair at UTAS was open to my putting less emphasis on the end-of-semester exam for a final grade – which is now weighted at about 60% for that class, and includes a final team project (an ill-defined assignment, as we discussed last week). So the ultimate outcome is a class that has both strong formative as well as summative assessments.

2. What are the elements of a formative assessment sequence, according to Dylan William?
According to Connie Moss and Susan Brookhart, Dylan William identifies six key elements to his version of the formative assessment process. These include:

 Shared learning targets and criteria for success – students have a clear understanding of what they’re expected to learn and are provided guidelines for expected outcomes.

 Student goal setting – students frame and establish realistic goals for themselves

 Feedback that feeds forward – this is feedback that informs the student of where they currently are in their learning in relation to where they need to be (feed forward).

 Student self-assessment – personal student responsibility for regulating their own learning

 Strategic teacher questioning – ask questions that will show proof of student learning.

 Student engagement in asking effective questions – students understand content and issues well enough to ask good questions. Related to this, students can become mentors and resources for each other.

1. How does Quest to Learn fit/not fit into a formative assessment strategy? Does it bring more or provide less than what William is recommending?
   
   

   QUEST TO LEARN is a Web-based assessment tool designed specifically for students and instructors in Math and Science – created at the University of Texas, in Austin. It consists of an extensive knowledgebase of questions pulled together by experienced faculty in the following disciplines: mathematics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, physics, computer science, and geology. It’s now used by over 1000 academic institutions. The tool is used by instructors to deliver self-paced learning assignments with associated grades and feedback for students.
   Quest to Learn is formative in the sense that students take the initiative to find solutions to questions that come up as they work through a variety of science and math based exercises. It provides ongoing feedback to help students build their problem solving skills.
   

    

   What’s somewhat deficient (based on Dylan William’s criteria) in the Quest to Learn approach, is the fact that a Web-based assessment is automated, not personalized for each student. I think this tool is specifically designed for large classes, which are characteristic of 100-200 level courses at the University of Austin. While the interactive, reflective element is there – it can’t quite replace a human instructor. One of William’s core goals is to provide feedback to students to motivate them to move forward and progress. That real-time feedback that propels students forward, and engaging other students to provide peer mentoring and support is missing in Quest to Learn. It approximates live instructor feedback for situations where there is a high student to instructor ratio, and automated mentoring is the only practical solution. Having never actually used Quest to Learn, however, this is just my initial impression.
   

    

   3. What is the difference between a competency and an ability?
   I had a difficult time finding educational theory material on this one, although Robin’s example on her Bendsstructures site was helpful.
   My tendency would be to use these terms interchangeably. However, my understanding of a competency is a lower level skill, such as starting up the engine of my car. An ability encompasses a wider range of related skills that are brought together for a higher level task – such as driving a car on an icy road – which challenges many different kinds of abilities – steering, braking, shifting, turning on the lights, checking my rear-view mirror, etc.
   

Metacognition:

    At first, the concepts of formative versus summative assessments seemed very much alike. It was only after I had a chance to read a few online articles regarding these (including the Dylan William blog) that I began to see how they differ. Summative assessment in my mind is associated with more traditional teaching assessments – exams, final papers, etc. It puts its emphasis on a final, tangible product, and has a “make or break” quality to it. Formative assessment puts more emphasis on process, and continual problem solving along with discoveries. I found that my experience last summer with a strongly implemented summative evaluation structure at the University of Tasmania brought into strong relief my own preference for using a formative approach to assessing students. I think formative assessment demands much more effort from the teacher’s standpoint.

I had trouble parsing out the following section:

1. Understanding why formative assessment would be any different for teaching an expert with existing skills than it would be teaching a novice who’s just getting his sea-legs. My only thought regarding this is that it would be useful to draw on an expert’s experiences to inform new forms of learning (?) I’m thinking that I didn’t quite understand what was required here.
   

Mozilla, the organization who created Firefox is a leading supporter of open source initiatives – such as Linux, Wikipedia, and Open Office. In the past, Mozilla has been focused on software – but they are now moving in the direction of open source education – based on peer2peer networks. The name of their open source learning project is Drumbeat, described as an “…online smartmob that’s putting open-source principles and methods together with new kinds of learning and methods.”

Much like Wikipedia, this is a way of harnessing many volunteers and participants to build a self-sustaining and continually updating educational system that’s free, and universally available. They say: “Open educational resources, intelligent use of media creation, gaming, social media in encouraging collaborative, peer-to-peer learning — all fit closely with both open Web goals and open source production methods.” It’s also a pathway to for everyone to participate in collaborative lifetime learning, gaining recognition/accreditation for completed work through a recognized system of badges (not unlike the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts merit badge awards).

To me, this novel new form of peer-to-peer teaching and learning is a great example of formative assessments.

Mark Surman, one of Mozilla’s principle organizers, recently was interviewed by Howard Rheingold, where he talks about the Drumbeat project.

http://vimeo.com/18498451

In this week’s module, I’ll be pulling together an activity that will be used for a course that I’m teaching in Fall 2011 called Visual Storytelling (CMST115). In this case, the activity is designed to be a final team project in which students demonstrate a variety of visual communications skills/concepts that are covered throughout the quarter. It is a capstone project that demonstrates to me whether they understand and can put into practice the big ideas that I’ve taught during the class. I’ll call this assignment the Team Visual Storytelling Project. As I breakdown this assignment, I’ll make use of Robin’s guidelines for Module 3.

A Big Idea in Media Theory

Cartoonist and author Scott McCloud summarizes media communications as follows: “Media converts thoughts into forms that can traverse the physical world and be RE-converted by one or more senses BACK into thoughts.” McCloud’s statement distills my own commercial and academic interests. My specialty is media theory, which explores methods for shaping and conveying ideas using communications technologies. Voice, graphics, gesture, music, narrative, perspective, motion, lighting, color, text, style, and interactivity all play a role in orchestrating multisensory ideas.

The Web revolution is coming into full maturity. In this new arena, everyone is both a producer and receiver of information. My goal is not only to teach media production tools, but how to design ideas that are informative and entertaining. My intention for this final team project is to get students to discover production tools, create images, storyboard visual ideas, integrate text with pictures, synchronize sound, deliver relevant content – in summary, convert an existing concept into a form that can be published and transmitted using digital media. This project represents a delivery of the big idea as described by Scott McCloud – converting thoughts that can traverse the physical world and be RE-converted by one or more senses BACK into thoughts.

The learning outcome for this project can be stated as follows: Students will be able
to create a 2 to 8 minute online screencast that incorporates a selection of visual storytelling and information design principles that were discussed during the quarter.

   The Ill-Structured Problem

   The ill-structured problem as it relates to educational theory is defined by Namsoo Shin Hong as a problem which does not have a known solution. It means that rather than providing a detailed step-by-step method for answering a question (such as solving a quadratic equation), the instructor provides a set of overall principles and skills that must be used by students in their own way to solve a problem. It’s just the opposite of a spoon-feeding approach. Following this metaphor further, students in solving an ill-structured problem, must use their own initiative to make a spoon, find their own food, and demonstrate that they can feed themselves. Students, not the instructor, must do the heavy lifting. Here’s how I set up an ill-defined problem for the Team Visual Storytelling Project.

Your goal is to create a 2 to 8 minute online screencast that incorporates a selection of visual storytelling and information design principles that we’ve discussed during the quarter. The topic and content of this screencast is up to you. However, each project must a) convey one easily identified core concept or idea b) demonstrate a consistent style (look and feel), c) tell a visual story using text and images (audio is optional) d) create a message design with a pre-determined target audience in mind. You can use photographs, video, digital graphics, or hand rendered artwork. I will be looking closely at how well your screencast communicates your core concept or idea.

The problem is ill-structured because it doesn’t specify which topic to cover, which techniques/skills to choose, what style to use,  what core concept to employ, who the target audience is, or what their role will be within their project team.  These are choices students must make on their own within the broad boundary conditions of the assignment.

Skills and Concepts needed to Solve the Problem

Since this project takes place at the end of the quarter, the process of completing it is intended to weave together various strands of visual narrative skills and concepts that were covered in earlier weeks. Rather than demonstrate all of the principles/skills covered during the quarter, I’m asking students to choose seven of these from a larger list of possibilities. In a summary document, they must explain how and where they used each of these concepts that were chosen from this list.

Each project must make deliberate use of at least seven of the storytelling and information design approaches listed here (choose any 7 from these lists that you will explain in your summary):

Narrative Devices:
Central dramatic question, continuity device, status, character, exposition, conflict, raising stakes, foreshadowing, universal theme.

Visual Storytelling:
Closure, first person narrative, third person narrative, use of word balloons to convey contextual meaning, multiple camera perspectives, symbolic conventions, transitions (moment-to-moment, aspect-to-aspect, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene).

Composition:
Leading lines, rule of thirds, symmetric balance, asymmetric balance, PARC (proximity, alignment, Repetition, Contrast).

Time:
Alternate worlds, eternal now, multiple perspectives, recursive time, time acceleration/deceleration, paused/frozen time.

Information Design:
More with lessing, present something new relative to something previously understood, efficient implementation of data ink, Location, Alphabet, Timeline, Category, Hierarchy (relative feature comparison).

Activities Used to Build Narrative Skills

    Throughout the quarter, students are placed in 2-3 person teams for in-class exercises, and one other assignment. Team collaboration skills are emphasized, since it is vital to be able to work well and problem-solve within teams. There are also a number of related projects and exercises (in and out of class) that familiarize students with fundamental concepts that are essential to completing the Visual Storytelling project. These include:

1. Storyboard project
2. 2-Page comic
3. Graphic Styles assignment
4. Website review and analysis
5. Visual Language analysis
6. Storytelling devices identification
7. Principles of Information Design review
8. Creating a short slide show with Impressr

After reviewing this week’s material, I decided to re-visit a final team project assignment for my CMST115 Visual Storytelling class. This is a course that I’ll be teaching again in Fall 2011, and it gave me the chance to upgrade its structure and content based on some of the teaching principles covered in Module 3. In reviewing the assignment I was able to both see its promise in delivering some of this week’s key concepts, and also gave me some ideas for fixing current gaps/weaknesses that I’ll have in place well before the class begins.

Some of the Module 3 principles that apply to this project include the following:

• Backward Design: I’m using the final project as a way to structure my course content – so that necessary steps are covered before a demonstration of skills/concepts is required.
• Big ideas: related to backward design is the use of big scale over-riding principles to guide weekly assignments and lectures.
• Ill-Structured Problems & Active Learning: An assignment that leaves room for interpretation and creative solutions invokes discomfort and some anxiety in students but in the long run, motivates them to become active participants rather than passive observers. It’s a passport to autonomy, self-reliance, and independent creative thinking.
• Contextualized basic skills learning: Ideally, students will take the narrative and design principles learned during their hands-on project and apply them to other similar situations in the future where they must prepare materials for various situations requiring visual communication of ideas.

Over the years, I’ve gotten educational theory exposure by way of Knowles, Piaget and Vygotsky (proximal learning) and I’ve been able to put some of their ideas to work in my own classes. But I would say that their influence has been indirect. Up until recently, Bellevue College hasn’t pursued a systematic program to teach teachers how to teach to the unique student population that we have, although that’s now changing with the introduction of the new Teaching and Learning Center. I came from a commercial and media production background, and I think the assumption was made (this isn’t unique to my experience) when I began teaching at BC in 1998, that since I knew my media craft, I would know how to teach it effectively. This introduction to the classroom felt something like my first jump off the high dive platform at the Michigan State University Intramural Pool when I was growing up. I got some good advice and mentoring from colleagues, and learned a lot from my students along the way. I guess you could say I learned how to teach informally, and from multiple sources, much like a hands-on, total immersion apprenticeship. Also, throughout this process I’ve been fortunate to have always taught Web augmented courses that allowed me to consistently integrate the Internet with my classroom teaching. I’ve always had the feeling that I was running as fast as I can to remain current – I’ve been teaching and learning with equal intensity, and it hasn’t ever let up.

For this Week 2 module posting I’m going to be describing (in condensed form) four current learning concepts and relating them to my own experiences. These include:
1) The Perry Scheme of Intellectual Development
2) Situated cognition
3) Routine versus adaptive expertise
4) Novice versus expert behavior

The Perry Scheme of Intellectual Development

• What do the levels in the Perry Scheme of Intellectual Development describe?  Connect them to your own experience as a learner.
  

  William Perry was a Harvard-based education psychologist who focused on the learning stages of students during their college years. Perry described these stages as follows:
  

Dualism – Schools and teachers are perceived by the student as gospel truth. Education reveals knowledge that pre-exists and is established. Question: “What is it that the instructor really wants?”

Multiplicity – All understanding is merely a matter of opinion. Opinions are like noses… everyone has one. Teachers are merely expressing their own views. “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.” Students at this level don’t assume responsibility for their ideas.

Relativism – Students are able to weigh arguments based on strong and weak support. There’s also an understanding that knowledge or conclusions about something is strongly influenced by underlying assumptions, world views, methods of research, or perspectives.

Commitment in Relativism – This is the highest level of learning, where students take responsibility for their own world view and knowledge. They demonstrate higher cognitive skills – assuming their own biases, making value judgments, synthesizing information from various sources, relating the parts to the whole, etc.

In a broad sense, I can see Perry’s phases at work in my own educational development over time. When I was growing up, I tended to accept everything my parents and teachers said was the truth, and accepted that they were looking after my best interests and giving me the “straight scoop”. After I left home, traveled the world, and had a variety of work experiences, I realized that there were many opposing ways of being – greedy versus altruistic, heart versus head, lazy versus industrious, ascetic versus sensuous, etc. It seemed as if all of these perspectives had their benefits as well as liabilities. Finally, I began to commit to my own values based on the relativism that I experienced out in the world, and made my own decisions regarding how I would conduct my life. Some of my values match those given to me by my parents and early teachers, while others do not.

Situated cognition is a phrase taken from John Seely Brown – who argued that all knowledge is strongly influenced by the context where it is learned. This context can be represented by language, culture, historical setting, personality, and many other factors. For example, language is acquired by many informal conversational interactions in a wide number of settings. The average 17 year old in the U.S. learns a vocabulary of about 5,000 words per year (or 13 a day for 16 years). The language itself contains the values, sentiments, and world view of its collective membership who share its structure and vocabulary. (Source: John Bransford).

Another term for this collective membership (in this case, people using the same language), is a community of practice.
A community of practice is made up of a group of people who share an area of common interest, and work together to enhance their continued learning of this shared interest. Examples of these are craft guilds, professional societies, fan clubs, musical groups, sports teams, and hobbyists.

A community of practice that I belong to in the Seattle area is social dancing, which I’ll be making more references to later. There are many different dances – tango, east coast swing, west coast swing, balboa, waltz, night-club 2-step, salsa, zydeco, foxtrot, polka, schottische, among many others. Each of these dances have steps associated with them, along with thousands of songs. There are instructors that teach these dances, but much of the instruction takes place informally on the dance floor, as techniques are spread by word of mouth. The techniques and styling for each dance form can never be exhausted, they’re infinite. The dances are also forms of exploration, where new patterns are discovered with names like Swango (swing and tango), Latin Waltz, and Traveling Blues. Thousands of people participate in social dancing in the Puget Sound area, and much of the information about classes, dances, and special events is communicated on the Web. You could consider this learning community as being situated cognition in the sense that everyone participates in contexts which are musical, interpersonal, and involve continuous teaching and learning of a variety of dance forms.

Routine / Adaptive behavior as they relate to Novices / Experts

The learning and education researcher John Bransford makes a distinction between routine and adaptive experts.

Routine experts learn specific methods for solving problems, and makes increasing use of them to become more efficient for a task at hand, perhaps learning a few additional tricks along the way. The example Bransford uses is typing, for which he says as a routine expert: “I just want a good keyboard and the ability to increase my efficiency over time.”

Adaptive experts “look forward to the opportunity to expand their thinking, and increase their existing solutions strategies”.
They are able to experience ambiguity longer than routine experts, and are aware of their own limitations and biases in their decision making processes. A recent television program on Alaska bush pilots provides a good example of adaptive experts, having to continually shift their flying strategies based on a wide variety of weather conditions, landing strips, cargo, and passenger requests. They have to continually draw from a wide variety of increasing skills to adapt to continually changing conditions. They are also aware of their own limitations and liabilities.

Novices relate to routine experts in the sense that they tend to pay attention to specific details and techniques before gaining an understanding of higher-order principles. They also tend to stay within established and learned paths rather than exploring new territory. Learning to drive a car is an example of this; a novice driver must pay attention to the mechanics of steering, shifting, braking, and accelerating before attending to navigating through traffic patterns. As another example, here’s a link to novices who are just learning to dance in a welcoming and safe environment. All are following specific steps and moves, since they’re just beginning their path to expertise.

Experts relate to adaptive experts in that they make use of fundamental learned skills to build more elaborate and sophisticated structures. They draw from higher-order principles which inform them what technique will be used for a specific task at hand. In the following video, two expert dance instructors, Jodi Fleischman and Ari Levitt demonstrate a Night-Club 2-Step. This is not choreographed, but is improvised in real-time to the music. It appears that this is pre-rehearsed, but they are both drawing from a wide variety of dance patterns to create this spontaneous performance.

Ideal Learning Environment

• Given intellectual development, communities of practice, situated cognition, routine/adaptive expertise, novice and expert behavior, posit an ideal learning environment.
  

I believe my experience with the Seattle area dance community provides a good example of an ideal learning environment, for the following reasons. 1) You can enter into the dance community with the intent of either learning existing techniques or dance patterns on a superficial but fun way, or decide to put your own stamp and styling over time. 2) You participate with a large group of people who have a wide variety of expertise, and are willing to share it, either formally (in dance classes) or informally ( on the dance floor). 3) You can learn a wide variety of dances from different cultures and musical traditions such as Lindy Hop, Scandanavian Dances, and Latin. 4) There are long established pathways to moving from novice to expert. 5) The dance community is a hybrid Web and live social entity. Websites, email lists, and blogs provide a method for the community to remain aware of events and stay in contact.

eLearning Environment

What kinds of learning does eLearning facilitate, what kinds does it limit?

Probably the greatest contribution of the Web to education are the huge number of resources it provides to teachers and students – both in the form of information sites, but also tools for building a personal knowledgebase. Regarding teaching theory, it allows students to take control of their own learning process and become their own librarian and producer. In the Perry Scheme it gives students a wide variety of material to weigh, measure, evaluate… and come to their own conclusions. I think it also provides a way for novices to potentially connect directly with the highest levels of expertise – in the form of individual tutors as well as supportive communities of practice. What the Web lacks so far is the limbic resonance and personal connections between students and instructors that occur in traditional classrooms.

Personal Learning Environment

Relate having a “personal learning environment” to one or more of the learning theories.

I think my own personal learning environment allows me to resonate most closely with what William Perry calls the Commitment in Relativism. With my own PLE, I now have the ability to organize information, publish (in multiple media forms) my own ideas directly to a Web audience, and get feedback from a wide range of teaching expertise through a variety of communities of practice (TED-ED, REZ-ED, Skype Educators). While I now feel I have a solid foundation in my own teaching skills, my PLE gives me the opportunity to continually upgrade my professional chops, in the context of a community of supportive colleagues. I can fully take responsibility for my own knowledge base, and remain committed to my own path of lifetime learning.