This concept seems to be helpful to people thinking about the advantages of teaching online. If you’re going to have an essay or a project or any kind of long term work with students, think of those projects as an iterative process. If you were doing this face 2 face, you might have them submit something halfway through the term. You might even get them to journal in a workbook that they hand in to you and that you hand back. It’s an organizational nightmare. Online you can create any number of spaces where learners can check in and post their progress. The web is very good at keeping track of student work for you. It also makes it very easy for students to share with each other.

For this to work, you can’t think of grading EVERYTHING. Setting up discussion for students and having them submit ‘their five favourite posts’ can be a great way to keep discussion open and also introduce curation.

Action:

Design one week of activities for your class. Start from the beginning and ask yourself how each step will be done by students working from inside their homes. Are there ways you can use the abundance of the internet to improve it? Are there challenges to any of the activities that are about how the web works?

Optional Resources

• Spotlight on Alternative Assessment Methods: Alternatives to exams
• Ungrading – a bibliography (a series of resources about alternatives to grading)