by Liesl Wuest
This
week we would like to take the time to highlight an excellent resource for
information and research on instructional technology and design: The Merlot Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT). Taken from the JOLT website:
“(JOLT) is a peer-reviewed,
open-access, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia
resources in online higher education. JOLT is published quarterly in March,
June, September, and December. The objectives of JOLT are to:
• Enable faculty to use technology
effectively in online teaching and learning by learning from a community of
researchers and scholars;
• Enable academic programs to design
and deploy academic technology to optimize online teaching and learning;
• Build a community around the
research and scholarly use of multimedia educational resources for online
teaching and learning.
The journal welcomes papers on all aspects of online learning and teaching in higher education. Topics may include, but are not limited to: learning theory and the use of multimedia to improve online learning; instructional design theory and application; online learning and teaching initiatives; use of technology in online education; innovative online learning and teaching practices.
The
publisher of JOLT is MERLOT, which provides a free and open
online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff, and
students from universities and colleges around the world to share their learning
materials and pedagogy”.
Periodically we will highlight articles that we think are especially useful and
relevant, but we encourage everyone to bookmark the site and review it on their
own from time to time.
The article
we are highlighting this week is “Development, Implementation and Evaluation ofGrading Rubric for Online Discussions”, co-authored by our very own Goodwin
professor Dr. Ann M. Solan and Rutgers University professor Dr. Nikolous
Linardopoulos.
The paper goes through
the process of developing and using a grading rubric for online discussions and
evaluates its use through student feedback. It has as lot of great information
about the importance of comprehensive online discussions grading rubrics and
the high degree of positive feedback that they received from the students who
were graded using the rubric. One student quote that I thought was particularly informative was, “ ‘I really appreciated
having what was expected clearly documented at the beginning of the course. It
let me know what was expected and helped me to prepare for each week. Other
classes have seemed extremely arbitrary in their discussion grading and it can
be very frustrating. I really enjoyed the way it was setup in this class. Thank
you’ ” (Solan & Linardopoulos, 2011).
The
appendix includes the original rubric they used at the start of their research
(Appendix A) as well as an updated version that they modified after the first
term (Appendix B). I strongly encourage you to take a look at the modified
rubric and perhaps even use it to create your own discussion rubric!
In the comment area below please share any online discussion rubrics that you currently use in your online class or discuss your experience using an online discussion rubric.
References:
Solan
A.M., Linardopoulos
N. (2011) Development, Implementation and Evaluation of Grading Rubric for
Online Discussions. MERLOT Journal of
Online Learning and Teaching, 7 (4). , 7 (4). Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol7no4/linardopoulos_1211.htm
