Assessment 8

An online community and a face-to-face community have some things in common and some things that are not in common. The first thing that they have in common is the most obvious and that is the objective of each. Both in a face-to-face community and an online community’s objective is for the student to learn. Next, in both the online and face-to-face community information is shared among the students. More so in the online community but it does happen in the face-to-face community. Also in the face-to-face and online community social communication are present. Social presence is a very important part of educational activity. The things that are dissimilar in the online community and the face-to-face community are for one, in an online community students must develop a mutual trust amongst each other. Students must trust people that they cannot see to hold discussions with and work with in groups with. Also in an online community students have to develop a sense of belongingness. Students need to feel like they are a real person that is a part of the class. They must also feel that others are present. It is good for students to see activity on a class site so they know that they are not the only person in the class which is why group work is good in a online community. In a face-to-face community an instructor is there to with the students to guide them daily and not there just to facilitate the learning. I have experienced one other online community other than this class but the elements were nonexistent there because we had no site in which we met. The instructor emailed us a syllabus and we emailed the assignments to her when they were due. However, in this course the elements are present. I have the ability to carry on an internal dialogue in order to formulate responses. We can email each other rather than posting to the discussion board if there is something we need to say in private. We are able to create a mental picture of each other based on the introductions we did at the beginning of the class. I also have a sense of presence based on our blogs and discussions and group work. I definitely feel like I belong to this class and am not enrolled in a class taught by a computer.

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Score
Discussion Topics	Student did not post answer to discussion question	Student posted the answers to the questions but left out required elements	Student answered each question and included required elements	3
Discussion participation	Student responded to none of the discussion questions	Student responded to some discussion questions	Student responded to all discussion questions	3
Assessment Criteria	Student did not compare and contrast communities	Student compared or contrasted communities but not both.	Student compared and contrasted communities	3
Assessment Grammar	Assessment was not on topic, unclear and contained many errors	Assessment was on topic but contained some errors	Assessment was clear and on topic.	3
Assessment Question 1	Student did not answer question 1	Student answered question 1 but did not incorporate it into the compare and contrast	Student answered question 1 and incorporated the answer into the essay	3
Assessment Question 2	Student did not answer question 2	Student answered question 2 but did not incorporate it into the compare and contrast	Student answered question 2 and incorporated the answer into the essay	3
Final Score				18/18= 100%
Comments: Good format! I liked this student’s example of the similarities and the differences.  I also thought the student had great examples of the benefits of the online community. This student also incorporated the information he or she learned from the lesson.