1) Describe how your thoughts/ideas/understandings related to evaluating educational media evolved during the process of building the Evaluation Instruments. What were the epiphanies and "a-ha" moments you encountered while working to construct these instruments?
After reading the rubrics that were handed out the first night, I questioned the assignment thinking “how could anyone come up with something different?” I know that I want to create a learning system that will have to measure up to someone’s rubric. So, my task was to develop areas of a rubric that would one day possibly rate my material. Setting out to find material about software and ASD was tough. There is not any software really focused on ASD to evaluate. Most is tailored for primary school learners and are very rudimentary. What I did find, interestingly enough, was research done in other countries. I found work dealing with cognitive abilities in learning and what to look for in rating a learning system. What makes an interface with a game work effectively with a player and how the motivation to interact with the game gets transferred into a learning environment.
The Nintendo study of the late ‘90s done with school children in Chile was a big “ah-ha” moment. There is always this question on competition between students causing conflict within the learning environment. While competition in the sporting field is acceptable, academic competition is different.(heavy sarcasm) What the study found in this group of learners is that rather than alienating students from each other, they shared skill and strategy tips with each other to help build up everyone’s scores. Even the less academically gifted were drawn into the activity by their gaming skills and helped them feel important to the group with their skill input. Maybe this group is not less academically gifted but rather they have not been educated in a way they can connect with.
I have also taken classes on learning and cognition but never had a teaching method held up to the principals of learning. The way we question our world is established in the way we are taught to question the world. If we are taught to basic rote memorization, we never learn the skills to apply what is taught.
When I reviewed the original rubric hand-out, I had the feeling that they were too subjective to what the reviewer’s personal feelings were. I wanted to find something a little more concrete that “Material shall represent…blah, blah, blah.” I wanted to find more quantitative ways to evaluate a material. Having it fit cognitive abilities, and also adapting for changing cognitive skills as the learner ages, seems a way to ensure the material works with a specific demographic and that it can be internalized by the same demographic.
2) Describe the conceptual/intellectual and procedural/logistical that you dealt with while working to construct these instruments. How did working in a team setting influence these challenges?
The big problem with this project wasn’t gathering the information. It was how to “reinvent the mousetrap” and not having a clear framework to proceed. Jeanne and I met to discuss this but not having the whole group together at one time, if not multiple times, never helped the project to jell. There was never a “meeting of the minds” as far as I could tell. We were four individuals that worked from our own perspective. I realize that time and distance can be an issue but from what I have learned, there are functions of blackboard that allow for online meetings and whiteboard collaboration through the web. This project, that was to be created on a “team” approach, never had the full guidance of the meaning of a team approach.
This response was asked for too early. How were we to understand the struggles until after the event is finished? Being so lost on a starting point and the lack of congruity in the group, it would have been unimaginable to write this and have it truly reflect the entire process of this project.
The final nail in this coffin is my own ASD issues. Because my thinking is different than most our expectations may have been off. It is difficult to infer what has to be done without specific guidelines. When one picks up on the task and expect others to be on the same page without qualifying, has led to the greatest challenge within this group.
