Collaborative Learning

During my Online Assessment class this week, myself and two classmates created a midterm project together. I enjoyed how the project was set up as we each had a part to do that was different from the other students in the group.

I chose to work with SurveyMonkey.com for my portion of the midterm. I'm extremely impressed with this survey and quiz creation tool especially considering that a basic account is offered for free. One of the biggest advantages I found with SurveyMonkey is that the questions come in multiple formats and various answers can be used. This is one of the few systems I have found that allow this to happen. I also really liked how the responses can be gathered and analyzed as a group. If I have fifty people take the quiz and answer differently to question one, I will have an analysis that shows fifty answers to question one. This alone makes this my site of choice for surveys and quizzes. I'm hoping to use this in my class to create anticipation guides that my students can take. I would also like to create individual biography quizzes to gauge my students' interests in this sort of assessment.

My group had a good handle on technology as we started our project with a wiki immediately. One of the group members started the wiki and posted the assignment right in it, so we were all able to work there without the need of another document. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this sort of assignment all the time because it is difficult to work out common times with a schedule, but I do believe that this sort of activity is very valuable once or twice in the class.

If you go to the following link, you can view my group's project on my website. My part was the SurveyMonkey section. Click http://lmeyer.iowapages.org below. Go to Mrs. Meyer's Online Classroom and click on the link for Creating Communities to view our project.

Thanks,
Mrs. Meyer
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