Matthew Allen

See also other posts including the first one, on Web Communications 101, which explains more of the context.

Web Publishing 206

(basic unit description)

Students doing the BA (Internet Communications) learn, in WEB101, to create a web presence that acts as the primary locus of their online identity, with links to other services and applications. In Web Publishing 206, the focus moves much more directly to writing effectively for the web (where writing can also including other media, but emphasises the written word).

The authenticity of the assessments in Web Publishing 206 are principally mobilised by requiring students to write regularly, on their blog, exploring different aspects and techniques of good online writing. The blog is assessed in its own terms, and also as the basis for students’ reflective essays which ensure that students are thinking about (as well as doing) this crucial online communication task.

Some examples of students’ blogs are:

• Eighteen Songs – WEB206 Weekly Blog
• Percussive Sweet Spot
• On the Internet, No-one Knows I’m A Blog
• Damien’s Web Publishing 206 Weblog | The Worlds of MMO’s

Notably, most students make virtually no reference to the ‘study’ component of these blogs: these are genuine blogs addressing audiences outside universities. Use of the tag Web206 however enables academic staff to look into them to find relevant content! And one student cleverly ‘colonised’ the name WEB206 : WEB206 | a Curtin University of Technology unit

While in WEB101 there was a strong sense that other students were the audience (along with the teacher), in WEB206 students are developing a much greater awareness of real audiences. In this respect, if no other, the assessment task is significantly advantaged by making it public knowledge networking.

As before, the blogging linked with other services and tools, pricipally delicious, as in these examples:

• Annoted Bibliography Feed (on the blog)

Once again, we see the value of the tag – the tag Web206 enables just the relevant links to be pulled from delicious into the blog, enabling a student to also use delicious for many other purposes. In this way, knowledge networking drives the nature of the assessment completion.

More findings from Web206 (which has only just run for the first time in late 2010)  will emerge over time. Thanks to Dr Helen Merrick, chief wrangler of publishing.

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The first of several posts, each relating to a different unit of study at Curtin

Introduction

Over the past two years, students in Internet Studies, Curtin University studying the BA (Internet Communications) and related courses have been doing a lot of authentic assessment involving online activities. These assignments are  authentic in that they are ‘true’ to the content of their studies (that is, aligned with the outcomes), ‘ real’ within the likely fields of employment for graduates, and ‘natural’  for the the emerging dominance of knowledge networking in society. More on these three variations on authenticity in a moment.

Not all assessments fit this pattern (nor should they), but we have seen significant improvements in the motivation of students to complete and exceed the requirements of assignments, as well as a greater degree of creativity and expression suggesting deeper engagement with learning. It has also, we think, improved students’ attention to more scholarly traditional assignments (such as essays) because of the variety we engendered across all assignment tasks. (And, it should be noted: essays are authentic – to the lifeworld of academic which also remains important as well as work and elsewhere).

Much of what makes these assessment approaches authentic is that they are public. Here, then, are some examples which suggest some of the value of embracing public knowledge networking as the basis for assessment, at least in courses that involve digital media and communications but, most likely, in any course where students need to work with, communicate and reflect on knowledge and, in doing so, become producers, not just receivers.

Web Communications 101 (WEB101)

A major component of the assessment in this unit is a ‘web presence’. More than a website and blog, a web presence interlinks a central node with linked  services and nodes to expand the digital footprint of a user and established their online identity. The negotiation and communication of identity is central to this unit: it’s not just ‘how to blog’.

A very small number of examples of these web presences are:

• Michelle’s Curtin Uni Learning Portfolio
• Caja Design – Web 101 – Blog
• Smartworks Education
• Outback Gold – A Website For Those With Gold Fever
• Reflection (and Stuff )

Over 400 students have taken the unit: sorry, can’t show them all. In particular, look at how some students have made their web presence almost entirely ‘real’, with bare hints of what it connects to (their study); others have not. Some students, as evidenced by these presences, are now using them as part of other units of study too.

Note that students happily created their own informal, computer-mediated network spaces such as Web101 – Curtin University | Facebook; and staff teaching also use the web as it was intended – free and rapid information exchange – to support this unit:  Web101 Assignments FAQ.

A big part of the unit also involves the use of twitter: see the most recent  Twitter search; delicious is also used.

Please look at “I Tweet Therefore I am?” by Dr Tama Leaver, chief architect of the WEB101 learning experience.

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As I have argued elsewhere: the authenticity of these assessments is not a simple ‘flip’ from artificial academic work into ‘real’ web work. They are a negotiation and a compromise in which equally valid requirements from both knowledge networking and education are brought into a creative and productive tension. In the next instalment, I will provide some examples of what happens for students in the followup unit to WEB101.