Assessment from the point of view of a designer: social, creative, dynamic and personal

Since I joined p2pu.org I have been thinking of “assessment” a lot. A long often misinterpreted word if you ask me; brings to mind things like evaluations and tests. Well, this post is about putting a 21st century spin on assessment and talking in particular about assessment of deeper learning in online learning environments, like p2pu.org.
First a bit of background; the last two months we have been privileged to work with a group of “assessment gurus” such as David Gibson, Alex Halavais, and Nils Peterson who are writing a white paper that suggests a framework for assessment of deeper learning in online learning communities (stay tuned for the paper). This blog post is inspired by that work and aims to approach assessment of deeper learning from the point of view of a designer.  

 
What is deeper learning?  
 
The Hewlett Foundation defines deeper learning as; Learning that involves mastering core academic content, critical thinking and problem solving, working collaboratively, communicating effectively, and learning how to learn independently (Hewlett Foundation, 2010).
 
Why do we care?
 
Some weeks ago one of the p2pu.org community members, Caley, shared his story on John Britton’s blog here. Caley who has a background in systems management work, had always wanted to learn how to program. In his story he explains how he picked up programming in p2pu.org; he talks about working together with his mentors and how he grew to become not only a web developer but also an active member of the online open source community (he even runs an open source website to track goverment data in Missouri, where he lives). During this experience Caley became deeply involved in his learning and developed skills like problem solving and collaborating. However these skills can not presently be assessed within the P2PU community or credentialed outside of Caley’s circle of peers.
 
How can we do this?
 
So how can we provide assessment of those skills within an online learning community?First lets try to imagine what an online learning space like p2pu.org is made out off; there is the community of  learners, and then there are the actions they take and the things they make. The space is designed to be social, personal, dynamic and creative. To design assessment of deeper learning we have to think of it as interwoven within that space; we have to imagine a learning ecosystem were assessment is; 

• Social (the community perspective): it emerges out of the social practices within a community of practice.
• Personal (the learner perspective): it embraces a diversity of autonomous learners. It showcases what each learner knows, cares about, is able to do and wants to do.
• Dynamic (the assessment perspective): it is situated in the actions and habits of the peers and evolves over time.
• Creative (the domain of knowledge perspective): the design showcases the things people make, talk about and exchange within different knowledge domains. It encourages learners to solve rich problems in real world settings by creating transparent authentic artifacts of practice. 

 Assessment of Deeper Learning Ven Diagram

So how can we *really* do this?

SOCIAL ASSESSMENT 
In this blog post we will provide design guidelines for assessment that is social (stay tuned for personal,dynamic and creative assessment to follow in next posts). The question we want to answer is;  how can we design the social circumstances that allow assessment of deeper learning? We can achieve that by incentivizing participation and fostering social practices within a community of both learners and stakeholders who share common passions.

To incentivize participation:
 

• Create a sense of belonging: the users feel that they are part of something “bigger”. The popular crowd-source funding platform Kickstarter does that very well, once you have contributed to a project you feel a certain level of “special” having helped to get a project realized.  A peer to peer platform can be designed to reinforce this sense of “special cause” and “belonging to something bigger” ; sponsoring of newcomers, completing certain challenges before becoming officially a member and working towards common greater goals could strengthen that feeling.
   
  Kickstarter
  

• Embed social graphs: the users can invite people who are already in their various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) to join them to “geek out”.  For example, a learner should be able to invite friends who share a common passion to take the same course. Friends should simply have to ‘accept’ the invitation to join the course.
   
  Connected through twitter & facebook to klout.com 

• Design a co-operative space: the space conveys that objectives are much easier to accomplish together rather than alone. For example, while in games such as Empires & Allies the first stages of the game can be played alone, after progressing players cannot purchase desirable virtual items and certain missions cannot be completed without the help of a friend (or without going on a battle against a friend). Similarly in a peer to peer environment working together could be encouraged as part of the experience, for example certain challenges should be harder to complete alone.
  

• Have learners take on roles: the space encourages it’s users to explore multiple identities; in doing so they become committed to the space and the community in which the learning is situated. Those roles are reflective of the practices that take place within the community and develop over time. The signaling of change in roles (e.g. becoming a trusted helper to others) are part of creating learning communities.We can approach community roles as complimentary parts of a big jigsaw; for example, in order to complete a website project you would need to have a developer, a visual designer, a project manager etc. The approach is that one person can have multiple roles in various projects. Additionally it might be useful to consider negative roles within the community as well, for example a non-active user is often call in social networks a “tourist”.
   
• Make the social interactions engaging: The process and experience of belonging in the community is designed to be an enjoyable and enlightening experience. The actions and transactions between peers are meaningful and fun. Such interactions could encourage in depth conversation and socialization, as well as the coexistence of trivial actions such as sharing, gifting and reciprocity.

• Build social obligation: similar to the qualities of co-operative space above, social obligation is build around the action of exchanging and gifting aid; this is common in Facebook games were you ask the help of your “neighbors” in the game to obtain virtual items or to better complete a task. This action makes you feel “obliged” to return the favor. Similarly in social networks of shared practice, such as Little Big Planet users will use special terms such as “h2h” which translates to “heart my game so I can heart your game”. These mechanisms usually do not allow for deep assessment, however they have been proven to reinforce interaction.
  
  Empires & Allies

• Design referral mechanisms: make it easy for the learning experience to spread through word of mouth across social network channels bringing new users to the site. For example, in p2pu that could involve getting prompted to invite a friend after completing a challenge.
   
   
  Klout.com
  

To foster social practices within a community of both learners and stakeholders:
 

• Develop Specialist Language: the vocabulary and terms used by the community are created by and make sense within that community of practice. For example in github users will use the word “fork” to get a copy of someones code. A problem with that is when newcomers join the community, usually not fully understanding what everything means. Using mentoring as well as automatic systems like tagging or a taxonomy allows for the newcomers to make sense of the existing vocabulary, add to it and move faster from the outskirts of a group to its core.
   
  
  Github 

• Develop Smartools : A smartool is a tool that a learner can use again and again in various learning contexts. In unlocking smartools learners connect the skills they have gained to actual tools they can use and master. For example, Firebug (if Firebug was to be unlocked as a tool after completing challenge x) is a type of smartool. Smartools can also be user created, such as a collection of visual references to explain basic HTML elements and tags.
   
  Firebug 

• Integrate badges internally and externally: the badges provide validation that is both internal, comes from the peers who are taking the same course, but also external, comes from the stakeholders, who for example might want to hire someone for a job. “The badges celebrate not just the accomplishment of co-discovered goals, but the engagement of the community in assessing and guiding the progress of the learner. Traditionally, assessors are themselves guided at least in part by extrinsic factors, most often in the form of a salary or fee.“(Gibson,Peterson,Halavais,2011). An essential element assessment in a community of practice is that the act of assessment is beneficial to the community and by extension to both the “student” and the “expert.” The badges can be designed not only to be awarded to the assessed but also the assessor. Moreover making visible and celebrating the effort that went into acquiring the badge contributes to having the badge be part of the assessment.
   
  School of Webcraft Badges
  
  Check out this blog post to find out more about Creative +Dynamic assessment and this one for Personal Assessment.