Software tools that promote collaboration and community building
There are many tools out and available on the web to promote a sense of an online community. These tools are available via CMS (Course Management Systems) and LMS (Learning Management Systems). Schoology is a “learning management system to make online education a collective effort between everyone involved in a student's education. With an easy-to-use collaborative interface, Schoology empowers engaging instruction and system-wide collaboration to enhance the overall impact of everyone involved.” (Friedman, Hwang, Trinidad, Kindler. 2009)
“Asynchronous e-learning, commonly facilitated by media such as e-mail and discussion boards, supports work relations among learners and with teachers, even when participants cannot be online at the same time. Asynchronous e-learning makes it possible for learners to log on to an e-learning environment at any time and download documents or send messages to teachers or peers.” (Hrastinski. 2008)
Schoology offers personalized homepages
for teachers & students, course profiles, calendar, online HW drop boxes,
assignments & events page, test & quizzes page, grade book & attendance
page, student tracking tool, email, messaging, and announcements, discussions
and group workspaces. It’s used in the
K-12 environments, Higher Education, and Corporate. It has teacher tools, “curriculum management
(utilizing standards-compatible content creation, sharing, and tracking)” (Friedman, Hwang, Trinidad, Kindler. 2009), and “advanced analytics which provides
teachers and administrators with critical information for optimizing
educational strategies.” (Friedman,
Hwang, Trinidad, Kindler. 2009)
For this discussion, please research either a CMS or LMS tool that can be used for online student / instructor collaboration and community building. Please post your initial response by Thursday and respond to two of your classmates posting by Sunday. If a student or instructor has posted to your initial discussion post, please try and respond back.
Required Reading:
Course Text: Assessing Learners Online
Chapter
13, "Interaction and Collaboration Online"
Chapter
14, "Managing Assessment of Interaction and Collaboration"
I have attached / linked the scoring rubric for you to download and follow.
Discussion Board Scoring Rubric
References:
Oosterhof,
A., Conrad, R.-M., & Ely, D. P. (2008). Assessing learners online.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Schoology, Jeremy Friedman, Ryan Hwang,
Tim Trinidad, and Bill Kindler. 2009 https://www.schoology.com/learning-management-system.php
EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4 (October–December 2008). Asynchronous and Synchronous E-Learning - A
study of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning methods discovered that each
supports different purposes. By Stefan Hrastinski
