Assessment

A focus on the contributions of individual members may not adequately reflect the collaborative nature of the learning that has taken place according to Grant (2009). Trentin explains the difficulty faced by assessing collaborative work in defining the degree to which an individual has contributed to the whole work (2009). He suggests that assessment of collaborative learning be based on three elements: • the level of learning (achievement of set objectives) • the products developed individually or collaboratively by the students • the collaborative process followed by students to carry out the online activities (2009).  Additionally, he suggests considering four areas that demonstrate active participation: • in the forum used for the planning stage; • in the peer review; • in the development of the wiki’s reticularity; and • in the development of the contents (2009)  A student’s contribution to the collaborative planning involves the document’s overall structure including evidence of co-decision making. Peer Review contribution includes thoughtful response to the work of others in addition to reflection on the comments posted by others. The reticularity of the final hypertext involves the connections that students make between their own work and the work of others, whereas the development of content is an overall assessmentof the total contribution of an individual (Trentin 2009).

Individual teachers adopt their own formulas and tables to monitor participation and interaction of students (Trentin 2009). Trentin proposes a method of cross-referencing all aspects of participation by categorizing contributions in terms of both objective data (number of contributions) and subjective data (based on teacher, peer, and self evaluation) (2009). Larusson and Alterman’s WDP, on the other hand, provides a transcript of every action taken within the collaborative space (2009). The “awareness components” for this wiki enables students to navigate directly from a notification to the location of the contribution within the wiki, helping students organize the collaborative task and the teacher to evaluate the extent of collaboration (2009). An additional feature of the WDP enables students to target specific information that is related to their interest or focus. These design features provide the added benefit of assessing study habits to find effective supports as needed. The reviewable transcripts of online activities can stimulate the reflection process by weeding out the unnecessary information and providing the ability to review in more than one context the information provided (Larusson & Alterman 2009). The WDP transcripts serve a range of practical functions including analysis of a student’s own online collaboration, a basis for classroom discussions, and to make complex material more concrete (2009).