Proposal Title
Short and sweet versus long and tedious - which one has better engagement and learning outcomes
Session Type
Ignite Talk
Room
P&A 148
Start Date
6-7-2017 2:25 PM
Keywords
student professional development, capstone projects, passion projects, digital citizenship, curriculum re-design
Primary Threads
Evaluation of Learning
Abstract
To be considered meaningful, assessments are often worth a substantial time and work investment by the student and as reflected in the length of the assignments (such as grant proposals, final reviews, posters or other capstone projects). I have been working on creating, shorter, more meaningful assignments that require students to become experts in communication and presentation (i.e. visual science infographics, 1 minute read to summarize a journal article, 3 minute talk, and 10 minute online projects) as well as on the material being presented. Students found that these short assignments were equally challenging compared to traditional capstone projects. Overall the rate of completion rate of assignments was found to be higher, student engagement in these shorter but more meaningful assessments was dramatically improved, and students felt that these newer forms of learning were better at using their digital skills. A brief overview of how some of these short 1,3, and 10 minute assignments can be adapted to other courses will be addressed.
Elements of Engagement
- Full access to the assignments used, examples from courses and caveats will be briefly presented in the Ignite talk but full links to the assignment rubrics, outlines, exemplars and templates will be available
- This is designed to be an ignite talk so I will be modeling some of the instructions within these slides
Short and sweet versus long and tedious - which one has better engagement and learning outcomes
P&A 148
To be considered meaningful, assessments are often worth a substantial time and work investment by the student and as reflected in the length of the assignments (such as grant proposals, final reviews, posters or other capstone projects). I have been working on creating, shorter, more meaningful assignments that require students to become experts in communication and presentation (i.e. visual science infographics, 1 minute read to summarize a journal article, 3 minute talk, and 10 minute online projects) as well as on the material being presented. Students found that these short assignments were equally challenging compared to traditional capstone projects. Overall the rate of completion rate of assignments was found to be higher, student engagement in these shorter but more meaningful assessments was dramatically improved, and students felt that these newer forms of learning were better at using their digital skills. A brief overview of how some of these short 1,3, and 10 minute assignments can be adapted to other courses will be addressed.