In house workshop for faculty at Asian International College

1. The Principles of
Online Discussion Activity Design

2. Our educational philosophy …
Participatory :: Authentic :: Flexible

3. Authentic assessment
• "... Engaging and worthy
problems or questions of
importance, in which students
must use knowledge to fashion
performances effectively and
creatively."
Grant Wiggins

4. 4
• multiple-choice tests
• fill-in-the-blanks
• true-false
• matching words
• … Students are
passive learners 
surface learning
Authentic assessment is not:

5. 'I hear, I
forget.
I see, I
remember.
I do, I
understand.'
Confucius (551-479 BC)

6. 'That what
we have to
learn to do,
we learn by
doing.'
Aristotle (384-322 BC)

7. "Life is an open book exam."
• Students need to
be convinced of
the authenticity
of the task if they
are to fully
engage
Professor Alan Blinder,
Princeton University

8. In brief …
• Harnesses the power of ICTs to emphasise
currency and real world authenticity
• A formative assessment item …
… invites the student to reflect on what
they have learnt (determining what is
relevant).

9. 'Willing suspension of disbelief'
• Required to enjoy
poetry, plays, novels
… and assessment
• Enjoyment 
engagement  deep
learning
Samuel T. Coleridge
(19th century poet)

10. A celebration of learning!
• Boredom and stress not conducive to
deep learning
• Important to catch the imagination and
appeal to the creativity of the learner
• Multimedia enhancements increase
student satisfaction and learning
(O'Brien and Seawell 2004; Vaughan 2001)

11. Key features
• Students play the role of decision-maker,
auditor, consultant or advisor
• They are presented with a unstructured
(open-ended) problem that requires
resolution (usually in the form of a set of
recommendations/ suggestions)

12. Getting started
• Keep a look out for material all the
time … not just when developing
curriculum
• e.g. Local newspaper and periodical
websites, magazines, television
news or current affairs programmes

13. What to look for
• A 'story' that learners can easily relate to
in lay terms
• Objective: to get them to think deeply
about an issue
• Student to act as 'expert witness' - an
effective mechanism for the validation of
their learning in their own minds

14. Creating a scenario
• Having settled on a theme, gather
together various media that can
bring the case to life
• The inclusion of hyperlinks,
photographs and/or streaming
media adds a human dimension
 authenticity

15. Lead characters
• No 'story' is complete without lead
characters
• Using real people with names, and pictures
and voices acts as a catalyst to student
engagement
• Fictional characters must give the
appearance of being real!

16. Defining the parameters
• The definition of the assessment task
might amount to no more than a
paragraph
• Ideally it should invite a wide of variety
of 'equally correct' responses
• Revisit the stated learning outcomes …
what skills should they have?

17. 17
Appropriate media:
where to look …

18. Common problems 1
• Scenarios taken out of text-books
– Must be unique
– Must be no model solutions on the Internet
somewhere
• Scenarios having the appearance of
being taken out of text-books
– Lifeless
– Limited or no interactivity

19. Common problems 2
• Links that are overly academic
– The goal is to create a scenario
– Links to several long and turgid articles defeats
the object
• Links that are too trivial
– Business periodicals are preferable to “Randy's
Daily Rant”
• Links that do not add value
– Links for the sake of having links serve as a
distraction

20. Common problems 3
• Boring, corporate-style images, instead of
'action shots'

21. 21
Common problems 4
• Audio-video links that are too
long (> 7 minutes)
• Audio-video links that add little
value, or where the 'story' is
mixed in with other stories.

22. Common problems 5
• Students get asked a traditional sounding
question …
“Why did the XYZ company fail in this
market? Critically discuss.”
• Instead of …
“Goh Chok Tong is concerned about the
future viability of the company and he has
employed you as consultant to advise …”

23. Common problems 6
• The task is too structured, or includes too
much instructional material
• Real life is complex and unstructured …
let the students figure it out for
themselves

24. Striking a balance
• Avoid 'spoon-feeding' but …
• … not so unstructured a student is
either struck by 'writers block' or goes
off in the wrong direction.

25. Summing up …
• Role play  the bridge between a learner's
education and their professional practice
• Placing the learner in the role of the key
decision maker, the expert advisor, or the
auditor serves to validate the student's
learning

26. Example from CEFE course:
• Activity (unit 3.2)
Share with your classmates the cases of illness
that have happened in your classroom / school.
Discuss why illness has the potential to spread
quickly in a school setting.

27. Example from CEFE course:
• Activity (unit 3.2)
Following a recent outbreak of hand foot
and mouth disease at your centre, you
and your colleagues have been asked
by the Centre Director to discuss how to
avoid such incidents in the future, or at
least discuss how this illness (or others)
might be controlled in a school setting.
What can be learned from such
incidents? Can they be completely
avoided? What would you consider to be
best practice in managing such a
problem?
Image source: flickr.com/photos/konkotzapavlidis