Week 6: Reflections on learning styles and e-assessment

This week has been devoted to two major issues: learning styles and e-assessment.

I have already got some training on multiple intelligences and learning styles and I know what kind of learning style I have. I am mostly a tactile learner. The new thing I learned about this week is how to use technology to target the different types of learners. That’s a new taste to the activities I design for my students. Implementing technology would cater more for the students, not only because it is not an ordinary lesson of chalk and talk, but also because it taps of their favourite learning styles. To have a clear image about the whole staff, I have summarized almost everything in a table explaining the different types of intelligences and possible activities and technology tools we can use to target each of them.

The second issue is about e-assessment. I have been interested in both rubrics and e-portfolio. I am used to paper portfolios, but electronic ones are new to me. I did some kind of research to learn more about them. I ended up by finding that sophisticated e-portfolios softwares are not free and need to be hosted in a server. There are free version but they are with limited use. But blogs, wikis and other tools of web 2.0 could be considered as e-portfolios if designed for this purpose. Thanks to portfolios we can have a clear image of the progress our students make; and e-portfolios facilitate the job more for both the teachers and the students.

Rubrics are another way that helps assess the learners’ work. They tend to motivate the students and maximize their work. Thanks to rubrics, we can make students do their best and improve their language in both oral and written forms. I have created two rubrics. The first is for a WebQuest about English speaking countries around the world which I created last week and the second is for a writing activity in which the students have to write an informal letter about their eating habits. The experience has made me realize how we can push our students do their best and enable them assess themselves because rubrics also serve as a checklist they can consult to evaluate their work.

Yours,

hamid