work in progress. The aim is to produce an organized container which may show their progress during their three last years of their Logistics course. It may be considered as a kind of Portfolio.        

                         

The learning objectives for this module are:

Understanding  how to embed collaborative learning into lesson design

Appreciating  the four dimensions of collaborative learning concerning group work, shared responsibility, making substantive decisions, and interdependent work

Understanding  how the 21st Century Learning Design Collaboration Rubric and Learning Scenarios can help you reflect and design collaborative learning activities

Assessing  the two collaborative learning activities you described in Module 1, using the 21 CLD Rubric, and report in your Learning Diary

The 4 Collaboration Questions - 

 These 4 collaboration questions are a great guide for all teachers who just start to implement collaborative activities in their work. The main point is "You have to build up the students' expertise."

https://app.box.com/s/tfcex1e24uxq8nliyb0lgfxhb5jebqf4    
A rubric for evaluating a students'product

https://app.box.com/s/x3jo8tg2iru5k0f4ign3f4in0m5o4og0 rubric for evaluating groupwork (written in Italian)

https://app.box.com/s/3wl5sbdnq8pex6f55qgq84fmyre6ay9k  self assessment rubric (written in Italian) 

We took inspiration from other rubrics we studied while surfing the net and tried to build up ours according to the general outlines for the Italian tools of assessment, including grades in 15th relating to the last three years of the Italian high school.

Unfortunately, after module 3 of this course I have realized that these rubrics look too complicated and may not be easily at hand while students are working together and this aspect deprives me from being present and more collaborative with my students. Indeed it takes long time to asses them. I find the idea of making students create their own rubric, especially a self-assessment one, effective and more useful because this can bring about students to be more aware of the process.

Surely  designing  rubrics appears to teachers a quite hard work, especially  when traditional techniques and methodologies are more instructional than students centered, based on delivering knowledge and facts. Despite this, even when teaching is centered on relationships, on inquiry, invention and creativity,  building up an assessment  grid is not that easy.

In the video there are a lot of interesting and stimulating tips that step by step guide teachers to be more aware of the objectives to bear in mind while approaching such a thorny field  if you would like  to create a rubric or to use a checklist.

As it is clearly said in the video: "To construct a rubric the first step is to decide on the level of knowledge that the rubric should assess. The next step is to establish assessment criteria and progress levels for each criterion. 

Usually we use 4 levels of progress, assigning 1 as the lowest level furthest away from reaching the objectives, and 4 as the highest level, closest to reaching the objectives. Each level needs a clear descriptor to avoid any doubts. It’s important to bear in mind two important tips when constructing rubrics. The first is that as noted by the researcher Brookhart, the biggest mistake teachers make when using rubrics is that they focus on the task or product, and not the learning outcome or proficiency the task is supposed to get students to demonstrate. Therefore, when constructing a rubric make sure your criteria is based on characteristics of the learning outcome, and not of the task itself. Another tip is that involving students in the design of rubrics is really effective."

 

Therefore as for my experience I think I will try to use rubrics to assess the outcome of my students learning as well as checklists to evaluate formative performances either in pairs or in groups. This means my partner colleagueas  and I have to start rethinking the way to design and construct assessment rubrics

I use technology for the purpose of collaborating with my colleagues teachers, both in school and outside. The collaborative group in my school is not wide: it is made up of 3-4 teachers of the same subject. I do teach English in a technological secondary school in Italy.  So we have been collaborating together to organize syllabus,,lesson plans  and project works  for our students for 4 years now. We use our email or whatsup to communicate the day and the date of our meeting according to the different assessments we all have to carry out during the week. So after a kick off meeting at one of our places  we plan the different activities that can be developed in the classes and communicate our ideas through google+ or other platform like edmodo. We have been trying to apply a new methodology which enables us to lead our students to be more communicative and  collaborative with one  another: the Flipped classroom. To be honest our learning- teaching approach is a blended one: from the face to face traditional lesson to the cooperative learning approach. We also have an educational blog we use to post our lesson plans in advance or edpuzzle, thinglink, quizlet activities. Often we exchange our material, too, through Box

I would suggest we teacher can also use Skype to have video conferences with other colleagues or simply exchanging ideas. Finally attending these MOOC is a great opportunity for all of us to compare, share expertise and learn

To answer these questions I have to turn back to the nineties when I used to work in a secondary  school "Liceo linguistico Europeo" On those days we teachers from different subjects spent long hours at school to plan, share and organize projects together to enable our students to have a different views about a  specific topic. Very little technology was involved in those years, but cooperation among teachers seemed to be effective. But time passes and and in Italy lots of things have happened: two or more school education reforms and in the meanwhile  I moved from Liceo to a technological secondary school. These last few years have dramatically changed my approach to my discipline which is English, and the need to work together seems to be even more urgent. And here technology have come at handy. In my school there are 160 teachers, a huge number. Every year most of us change classes, students and colleagues, some of us move to other schools. But we are lucky, the school is equipped with many IT instruments and tools: computers for the ITC course, interactive white boards in every classroom, digital electronic register educational platform such as moodle. Despite this, cooperation and collaboration among teachers is still a challenge. I cooperate with few of my colleagues, some others  seem to be interested but somehow scared of the amount of time which this work necessarily requires. In my opinion the conditions needed to work together is more awareness of our talent and expertise, to talk with each other  at a reasonable pace even though in day-to-day life, it’s really busy.