For Granted

I am wondering more about what we take for granted as we consider this transition, about both the face-to-face class and the online class. We assume that we will use discussion forum as a major means of communication in online classes. We use them in our f2f class, and they translate to online (I mean, they're even called the same thing).  But, now I am thinking about those discussions I have in my f2f class. I don't really want some of them to translate. I take discussions too much for granted in f2f. They often don't work.

Formative Assessments

I have known for sometime the value of formative assessments, where we provide feedback and guidance as the students learn. I enjoy providing them to students, when I can structure courses so that they make sense and are efficient enough to be effective. But returning formative assessments to students, never fails to entertain me. Because students (some not all) have no idea what to do with it. Have we moved so far from formative assessments that students don't know what to do with drafts? I hand back drafts of research proposals that I have spent hours re-writing sentences, rearranging paragraphs. And tell my class, "these are looking really good." I am greeted with responses of "Not mine." "What do you mean?" "You wrote all over it." "What is the last comment I made across the bottom of the last page?" "'This looks like a really good start.'" They act like they have never seen teacher feedback on papers before. And I wonder, have they? The first time this happened I was rather shocked. The assignment is named "draft," I thought that implied there would be corrections to be made before the assignment named "final version" was due. Now I take entertainment value from their consternation (let's face it, I teach research, I have to be a little bit sadistic), and try to explain to them that the purpose of a draft is to improve their writing with feedback from others.
This does make me wonder if I am not providing enough formative assessment in my other classes. But then I wonder how small a class and how few number of courses I would need before I would be satisfied that I am providing the type of just-in-time instruction, formative feedback, and hands on attention that I want to be.