Post 460: How can I Gauge Online Learning Through Engaging Activities and Assignments?
Today, I attended a 20 minute Magna Publication Online Webinar "How Can I Gauge Online Learning Through Engaging Activities and Assignments?", which was presented by Jeremy Caplan, Director of the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY. In this webinar, Prof. Caplan discusses the different ways you can check for student understanding of core class concepts.
Prof. Caplan said that you can have students summarize the lesson after you give the lesson. I ask my students comprehension questions to check to see if they understood what I taught. Prof. Ho says, "A noun is a person, place or thing. So, Randy, what is a noun? Can you give me an example? Then, Randy would say, "A noun is a person, place or thing. An example would be 'mother' is a noun"
Prof. Caplan also says you can use Analogy to compare today's world leaders with world leaders from the past. When I was teaching a forum about the difference between Machiavelli and Confucius, I would ask students, 'What world leader today reminds you of Machiavelli?" and "What world leader reminds you of Confucius?" Students likened moral leaders to Confucius and likened immoral cruel leaders to Machiavelli. Lincoln and Obama was likened to Confucius while Putin and Mao were likened to Machiavelli.
Prof. Caplan mentioned Retrieval as an effective way to check for student understanding. In other words, you ask students to remember what you just said by giving a quiz or short oral test. After I go over the grammar concepts for the grammar quiz, I would both orally quiz my students by having them correct incorrect sentences or we would take the practice grammar quiz I give them from the Zoom shared screen while students orally would give me answers to the fill in the blank or multiple choice quiz questions which are actual quiz questions taken from their weekly quizzes.
Prof. Caplan talked about giving immediate feedback to assignments, so students see right away what they did wrong and how they can improve. He advised teachers to give feedback in small chunks so as not to overwhelm the students with too much red ink. I always give students 2 or 3 areas of improvement at a time so that they are not overwhelmed. During the first draft of correcting, I revise student papers mainly for essay structure. Then, after students have mastered essay structure, then on the second round of corrections of that same paper, then, I would correct for grammar errors. I don't do both at the same time because if I did, I would overwhelm the students with too much red ink.
I like the idea Caplan gave of giving feedback separate from a grade, so students could focus on the errors rather than the grade. When students focus too much on the grade, they lose focus on their grammar and essay structure feedback because they are too upset about the low grade, or they are too busy being angry for getting a low grade rather than focusing on learning from their mistakes.
Finally, Caplan says another effective way to check for student understanding and another way to promote student understanding is to present material in different multimodal ways. I always present my material in multimodal ways to adapt to students with different learning abilities. For my visual and audio students, I make screencast videos of my material, I add music to my PPT presentations for a more dynamic lesson. I create Bitmoji cartoons to motivate students to write, and to teach students about The Writing Process. And finally, I provide lecture notes of my Zoom Lectures for students who like to read to learn new material. For the hands on students, I provide weekly Zoom lectures and one-on-one Zoom classes for my more active students.
These are the many different ways you can check for student understanding of core class concepts which I have used in my online classes through the years. Prof. Caplan gave a great 20 minute speech! I also love getting the Completion Certificate after I watch the 20 minute video!
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