Assessment within Virtual Exchange: a driving factor for student participation and engagement
Résumé
Virtual Exchange (VE) and local course sessions form together a complex blended learning environment. Manifold factors influence the success and the achievement of the learning aims within the online exchange and the course (O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006; Helm, 2015).
One major driving factor of students’ participation and engagement in VE appears to be what students are assessed on and how this is related to the online exchange. This is our hypothesis based on the observations made after a first year of a VE project entitled Telenta (TELecollaboration, ENglish and TAsk design) (Nissen 2017). It is consistent with Biggs’ claim for an alignment of learning objectives, assessment and learning activities (Biggs & Tang, 2013), that also underpins O’Dowd’s (2010) claim for an assessment within VE that is coherent with targeted learning outcomes.
Based on the first year’s observations, we partly modified and homogenised student assessment in both of the two participating partner classes - 3rd-year future primary teachers on the one side, and 4th-year future e-learning designers on the other - for the current second year of our VE. The scope of our study will be to verify our hypothesis, through an analysis and a triangulation of the data steaming from this second year of our exchange. The gathered data are three reflective questionnaires the students filled in after the different VE tasks, a final questionnaire, reflective texts, student exchanges within a secret Facebook group, teacher observations and exchanges, and 3 interviews that will be carried out on each side (6 in total) with specific regard to our hypothesis.
Initial results show a decrease in dropout on the Italian side where there was no assessment for the telecollaboration last year whereas this year students could use the experience as part of a compulsory language exam. However, in France, where the project and all its components are compulsory and assessed, students continue to point out a different level of student participation between the two partner institutions, and attribute this to remaining differences in assessment on both sides.