Let's Be Joyful

This week's focus, and to be honest a focus I'll be honing in on more and more in the coming months, is various types of assessments.

Like me, you may be seeing your inboxes, discussions, social media algorithms and more flooded with educators looking at "alternative" or "back to basics" assessments.

Rather than put modern or throwback theme on any of them, I think our time is well spent when we explore what works best for us and our students when we consider a few factors:

• what we are trying to determine when we assess -- comprehension? mastery? confusion?
• who our students are
• the modality in which the class is set
• where we are in the term we are teaching
• IF assessment is what we need versus another approach

This infographic came from one of my favorite local groups, The San Marcos Writing Project. They do focus on K12, so look past the "Principal" wording and you'll find many types of assessments we already do or maybe have done in the past. These are listed as "alternatives -- why? This always makes me curious because it suggests these are not the way students are or have been assessed. In a world where standardized testing has become the norm, I can see why these would be considered alternative in some K12's. But we also know many K12s where these are regularly employed.

Now, let's think about our own classrooms -- both online and on-ground. As an on-ground instructor, I can easily work almost all of these into an English class. As a HyFlex instructor, it gets trickier, but I can use most of these. As a fully online instructor, I have to be adapt many of these to be as useful as they would be in another modality AND be more useful to me than a quiz/exam/essay. Less valuable? No. A bit more work to make it work? Probably.

As the Joyful Teacher, I am embarking on creating a series of workshops and materials for the C3 to support faculty in their ongoing journey to assess as successfully and effectively as possible. I know how I assess and why, but I need some input from you!

The survey below is my own. All responses are anonymous. I am not here to push my own ideas of assessment; I am genuinely trying to learn, so anything you share is appreciated!!

I teach more than 50% of my courses fully online, so I'm always looking at new ways to do things to get ahead of AI, bots, and to keep things fresh. Because I am an English teacher, most traditional assignments lend themselves to being done far too fast and easily by AI now. However, even prior to AI, I found that having students complete discussion board posts and writing responses was getting old for me. I was tired of the rote grading, the lackluster engagement by them and me, and I was craving more.

So, this is one assignment I do with my students that is focused on showing them how to look for confirmation bias when they do an internet search. They watch the video below and then the assignment is for them to research a topic for their paper using this same method. The catch is, they have to record it in Studio just like me and share the video. They do not have to share their face. So far no one has had difficulty with accessing a computer for this, and if they were to ask, I'd make an arrangement of some kind. But, this is the "assessment." It's formative for all intents and purposes. It shows me if they are understanding how to do this. But, it engages them differently than typing up their answers or using AI to do it for them. So far so good. Disclaimer: this assessment may be obsolete by the time this email reaches you.

The deadline to submit your proposal(s) is this Friday, Nov. 13th.

What are you working on in the classroom that you want to share? What are you concerned about and would like to discuss? What resources are we missing that you can bring to everyone? We need your brains and energy! That sounded a bit tooooo Zombie-landish, but you know what I mean!

The next few weeks are about to get wild due to our new Academic Calendar! Here is a visual you can even show your students.

This week is a short week, then we have a full week on, followed by a full week off, and then two weeks on until the last day of class AND NO FINALS WEEK.

I've cultivated hundreds of resources for you, and add to them each week, in the C³ Teaching and Learning Canvas shell.

Learn more about:

• allyship programs
• culturally relevant pedagogies and practices
• assessment practices and research
• ethical and educational considerations for AI
• humanized learning practices
• dual enrollment

and sooo much more! All recordings I've done for online sessions are there, copies of this newsletter, you name it! Anything you review on this site is 💪 FLEX eligible!

Located in T250 at OCN (by the campus police at the front of campus), the C³ Teaching and Learning Center is FOR FACULTY. We have a learning library you can borrow books from, laptops you can use, chargers for your devices, a printer, a scanner, a shredder, a laminator, a coffee maker, and lots of quiet space!! Come use it as your home away from home to get some work done or chill between classes.

The door code is 4215 and I literally cannot say that enough.