Month: November 2009

A Journal Article Workbook

Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks I am beginning to work on revising one of my doctoral papers for a journal article (which will hopefully be my first, single author article), and am happy with the new text I just found to assist and help organize the process — Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success, by Wendy Laura Belcher. She writes in a friendly and encouraging style, while clearly remaining focused on the goal of publishing the article.

Right now, I am working my way through the first week, which is Designing Your Plan for Writing. She has a few handy templates for the process, including a Twelve-Week Calendar for Planning Article Writing Schedule and Weekly Calendar for Planning Article Writing Scheduling, both freely available on her website. While I often think just having the templates is enough, I know that remaining focused and having a guide / mentor to assist in the process is well worth the time and efforts. You may be surprised at all her useful suggestions in the 350-page workbook.

Today I will work on my 12 week schedule, so I can finally take one of my ideas and bring it to light . . .

Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2009-11-22

  • Starting yet more laundry; will continue my work between clothes in and out. #
  • New comment on "Aalborg dialog on May 2, 2010" http://bt.io/AVJp #
  • Jeffrey's Twitter Updates: Assessment Issues in Online Learning http://bit.ly/8e8ulZ #
  • Finally caught up on my Lancaster University Module postings for this week. I have been working on them for the past 2 hours. #
  • Did #TwitterBerry change its name to #OpenBeak? #

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Assessment Issues in Online Learning

performance-testI have been working all day on issues around assessment for my doctoral course of study (the one I am taking, this time!). It is amazing how some issues that seem so straight-forward at first are really very complicated and involved.

One of my colleagues recommended this current article from Sue Bloxham: Marking and moderation in the UK: False assumptions and wasted resources, (Bloxham, S. (2009). Marking and moderation in the UK: False assumptions and wasted resources. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34(2), 209 – 220) which I read with great interest. With issues around teacher / learner power, whether we can assess if learning is done at all, how issues meant for the natural sciences is problemativ when applied to the social sciences, and how (if?) to objectively measure students in a consistent manner, she gave me a lot to think about. I think the author ended her work in a significant way for those of us considering assessment in the social sciences:

at heart this is an epistemological issue; how is the knowledge of what is a good exam answer,  essay, project or piece created? It is created through a social process involving dialogue and experience and using artefacts such as assignment guidance and assessment criteria but, in essence, it remains essentially an individual construct, heavily influenced by traditions in the subject discipline (p. 218).

Now, what to do with this for my own online class?!