Slides from the workshop presented by Margaret Hamilton and Joan Richardson at the Australian Technology Network conference in Sydney in November 2010. From the ALTC-funded project "Web 2.0 Authoring Tools in Higher Education: New Directions for Assessment and Academic Integrity"

1. Students’ use of Web 2.0 tools in higher education:
Good practice in assessment and academic integrity –
What does it take?
An ALTC priority project 2009-2011
Margaret Hamilton and Joan Richardson
RMIT University
ATN Assessment Workshop
19 November 2010

2. Project team
Jenny Waycott (project manager), Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health
Sciences, University of Melbourne.
Celia Thompson, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne.
Margaret Hamilton, School of Computer Science and IT, RMIT University.
Joan Richardson, School of Business Information Technology, RMIT University.
Kathleen Gray (project leader), Faculty of Medicine / Department of Information
Systems, University of Melbourne.
Rosemary Clerehan, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash
University.
Judithe Sheard, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University.

3. Project
background

4. The future of teaching & assessing
“academic writing”
Chodorow • “the form and substance of scholarly
(2000, p.91) communications will change over time, so
that it will be difficult to trace the historical
flow of the work”
• “a free-flowing stream of scholarly discourse
will reduce the role of scholarly authority in
the progress of research”
• “the roles of individual authors will be
obscured in the electronic environment”

5. The future of teaching & assessing
“academic writing”
O’Reilly & Battelle “One of the fundamental ideas underlying
(2009, p. 2) Web 2.0 [is] that successful network
applications are systems for harnessing
collective intelligence ... a large group of
people can create a collective work
whose value far exceeds that provided
by any of the individual participants”

6. The future of teaching & assessing
“academic writing”
Kakutani “jump to the summary, the video clip, the
sound bite — never mind if context and nuance are lost
(2010, in the process; never mind if it’s our emotions, more
paras 13-14) than our sense of reason, that are engaged; never mind
if statements haven’t been properly vetted and
sourced”
“tweet and text one another during plays and
movies, forming judgments before seeing the arc of the
entire work”
“power-search for nuggets of information that
might support their theses, saving them the time of
wading through stacks of material that might prove
marginal but that might have also prompted them to
reconsider or refine their original thinking”

7. What do you think
?
“The assessment of student web 2.0 authoring is
.......................
for learning and teaching in Australian
universities”.

8. Project aims
A collegial approach to addressing the challenges of university
assessment 2.0:
1. Survey and interview Australian teaching academics
(September 2009)
2. Convene a national roundtable (November 2009)
3. Field-test good practice guidelines (February to June 2010)
4. Produce and share resources (July 2010 ff)

9. 1. What goes on in assessment 2.0?
The subject teaching context
1. What discipline or professional degree/s are students enrolled in when
they complete this unit of study?
2. At what level/s is this unit of study?
3. How many students were enrolled in this unit of study the last time it ran?
4. When did you first use this assignment in more or less its present form in
this unit of study?

10. The subject teaching context
Discipline
Number of
responses
Humanities/Society & Culture 16
Education 15
Information technology 11
Management and commerce 6
Health 5

11. The mechanics of the assignment
Type of Web 2.0 activity Number of responses
wiki writing 32
blogging/microblogging 31
social networking 17
audio/video podcasting 16
virtual world activities 12
social bookmarking 11

12. The mechanics of the assignment
Time given to complete Number of
assignment responses
More than 1 month 42
1 month or less 14
1 week or less 2
1 day or less 1

13. The mechanics of the assignment
Estimated time to complete Number of
assignment responses
11-20 hours 21
01-10 hours 17
21-30 hours 10
31-40 hours 7
Less than 1 hour 3
More than 40 hours 1

14. The marking process
Who marks the assignment? Number of
responses
Marked by one staff member 40
Marked by more than one staff member 17
Marked by other students 8
Self-marked by the student/s responsible 7

15. What techniques are used to mark the assignment? Number of
responses
Comments as well as marks provided 41
Rubric used 33
Marked in stages 22
Equal marks shared by everyone in a student group 15
Verification of identity of students submitting work 13
Plagiarism checking tools used (e.g., Turnitin) 12
Blind marking (i.e., student work is de-identified) 3
Automated analysis or grading of student work 2

16. What feedback do students receive? Number of
responses
Grades in the form of a number or letter 44
Confirmation
43
(confirmation that work is of acceptable standard)
Explanation
41
(recommendations for bringing work up to standard)
Correction
39
(flagging of specific shortcomings with student work)
Elaboration
25
(supplementary information to extend understanding)
Diagnosis
(analysis of what may have led to shortcomings or 22
misconceptions in student work)

17. 2. What would good practice look like?
When university students are asked to
demonstrate their learning using this form of
web 2.0 authoring, what academic standards,
and assessment and reporting practices are
essential or desirable?
Proceedings of national roundtable:
http://web2assessmentroundtable.pbworks.com/

18. 2. What would good practice look like?
Affordances:
Ensuring an appropriate fit between what Web 2.0 activities
entail and what assessment is trying to achieve
• Open publishing
• Communication styles and texts
• Personal identity and experience
• Co-creation, collaboration, crowdsourcing
• Content management

19. Affordances
Open publishing:
• Student work can be made easily
accessible to an audience of
peers for mutual benefit including
reviewing and rating.
• Review and assessment of
student work from outside the
university can be invited or
anticipated.

20. Affordances
Co-creation,
collaboration,
crowdsourcing:
• Group work can scale between a
small closed group and a large
free-to-join learning community
• Individual contributions to group
work can (sometimes) be
distinguished.
• Groups can work on large,
complex tasks.

21. 2. What would good practice look like?
Processes
Supporting individual and Design
organisational learning
throughout the cycle of
Review Implement
assessment activities
Feedback Mark

22. Processes
Design rationale
• Student learning can’t be assessed with as much effectiveness, reliability
or validity by using any other type of assignment.
• Students strive to achieve excellence more than they would in some other
type of assignment.
• Staff manage the assignment related workload more sustainably than with
some other type of assignment.
• Another reason ....

23. Processes
Implementing how?
• Explain the timing, weighting and criteria
• Show and discus exemplary student work
• Explain academic attribution and citation practices that are expected
• Provide opportunities to practice and show learning based on formative
assessment, before submitting work for summative assessment
• Other teaching techniques?

24. Processes
Review and monitor using...
• Student feedback about this assignment
• Input from relevant professional or industry advisors
• Longitudinal evaluation of student performance in this assignment
• Academic peer review in learning and teaching forums
• Other methods of continuous improvement....

25. 2. What would good practice look like?
Policy
Assessment that is safe and
fair for students and staff
• disability
• access to IT services or
equipment
• appropriate conduct
• identity and privacy
• academic honesty and integrity
• special consideration
• moral rights and copyright

26. 3. What works and doesn’t work in real subject teaching settings?
Criminal Law
18 subjects @ Blogging Cultural Studies
5 universities Media Studies
during Social bookmarking Education
Semester 1, Social networking Japanese
2010: Photo and video
Communication Design
Economics
sharing
Work Integrated Learning
Business
Virtual worlds
Chinese
Accounting
Education
Wiki writing Science
Information Technology
Italian
Combined Web 2.0 Document Management
tools Information Technology

27. We acknowledge contributions by ...
Project Advisory Group
• Matthew Allen, Bill Anderson, Greg Battye, Robyn Benson, Tracey Bretag, Jenny Buckworth,
Denise Chalmers, Geoffrey Crisp, Leitha Delves, Bobby Elliott, Jacqui Ewart, Glenn Finger, Tom
Franklin, Merrilyn Goos, Scott Grant, Ashley Holmes, Christopher Hughes, David Jones, Marj
Kibby, Adrian Kirkwood, Mark Lee, Catherine McLoughlin, Beverley Oliver, Kaz Ross, Alison
Ruth, Royce Sadler, Mary Simpson, Arthur Winzenried, Katina Zammit, Lynette Zeeng.
Project Reference Group
• Michael Abulencia, Robyn Benson, John Benwell, Marsha Berry, Marilys Guillemin, Laura
Harris, Deborah Jones, Gregor Kennedy, Shaun Khoo, George Kotsanas, Lauren O’Dwyer,
Jason Patten, Emma Read, Julianne Reid, Gordon Sanson, Cristina Varsavsky.
Project Field-testing Group
• Matthew Absolom, Anne Davies, Cathy Farrell, Scott Grant, Terry Hallahan, Michael
Henderson, John Hurst, Ramon Laboto, Warren McKeown, Michael Nott, Kerry Pantzopoulos,
Michele Ruyters, Sukunesan Sinnappan, Michael Smith, Sandra Smith, Robyn Spence-Brown,
Elizabeth Stewart, John Terrell, Jenny Weight, Lynette Zeeng
ALTC
Support for this project has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd.
(www.altc.edu.au), an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations.
The views expressed in this presentation do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning
and Teaching Council, or the views of individual contributors apart from the project team.

28. We invite you to join in and extend the discussion
• Moodle: www.groups.edna.edu.au/course/view.php?id=2146
• Blog: http://web2assessment.blogspot.com
• Bookmarks: http://www.citeulike.org/tag/assessment20
• Workshops 2010-2011
@ HERDSA, ATN Assessment, ASCILITE, ACE
• Feedback: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22APCVU3JP7

29. References
• Chodorow, S. (2000). Scholarship & scholarly communication in the
electronic age. Educause Review, 35(1), 86-92. Retrieved 28 November,
2007 from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM001B.pdf
• Kakutani, M. (2010, 17 March). Texts without context. [Book review]. New
York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html?ref=books
• O’Reilly, T., & Battelle, J. (2009). Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On.
Special Report for the Web 2.0 Summit, 20-22 October , San Francisco CA.
Retrieved October 1, 2009 from
http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/28/web2009_websquared-
whitepaper.pdf