What guidance should be given to students for their web 2.0 assignments?

Gray et al (2012) found teachers have encountered too main challenges towards assessment of web 2.0 assignments. In the last blog post, I mainly discussed about the second challenge: how to evaluate students' evaluation. In this blog, I will focus on what guidance students should receive for the Web 2.0 assignments. 

What guidance should be given to students for their web 2.0 assignments? 

 Teachers are worried about that what guidance they should offer students. They are worried that too much guidance would put constraints on students' thinking. But inadequate guidance may let students get lost and feel frustrated (Gray et al, 2012).  I think they should work together with their tutors, or assistants to give clear guidance for students during the whole process of web 2.0 assignments.

Before they work on the assignments, teachers need to offer clear criteria for the web 2.0 assignments. and also prepare students for a new form of assignments.

As with the criteria, different levels of study, and potential diverse content types make it hard to establish a clear and fixed criteria (Gray et al, 2012). But I think it is necessary and doable to offer clear criteria for web 2.0 assignments. Take one assignment based on blogger for example. In the criteria, teachers can make it clear that students need to finish the minimum requirement: writing at least 4 blogs reflecting on what we have learned in this weekin a week (borrowing ideas from V), making at least 4 comments on classmates, reading at least 8 blogs. As long as they finish the minimum requirement, they feel free to post more blogs. I think the minimum requirement works effectively in web 2.0 assignments and traditional assignments. Students always need to know what they should finish. I know web 2.0 tools should enable students to express freely. But as long as they are applied in educational environments, clear learning objectives should be attached to the assignments, I believe.  

They should also inform students of that they may go through a different process with web 2.0 technologies if some students are not used to web 2.0 assignments. As Gray et al (2012) found, students need to know they may not do well in the web 2.0 assignments at first. Students need to know that they may gradually find their unique voices, and understand the rules for sharing appropriately and writing with authority. Teachers also need to inform students that their process for doing their assignments would be assessed. As long as students know about that, they will purposely keep notes of their contributions to the assignments. Take Wiki-based collective assignments for example. Students need to know they should not directly overwrite others' input. Instead, they should leave a comment to others' editing. After two students agree on rewriting some sentences, they can do that. But they should make notes of that. This will make it easier for teachers to evaluate students' different contributions to the Wiki assignments.  However, Students not only demonstrate learning outcomes in a discipline, but also facilitate their learning processes in web 2.0 assignments (Gray et al, 2012). They facilitated their learning processes by optimizing peer review, extending the learning community, encouraging ongoing engagement (Gray et al, 2012). So to be fair, teachers should make clear about how they assign grades to individuals' contributions to facilitating the learning process. Let's imagine this situation: a student always lead the wiki writing, and leave positive comment and feedback to others' writing. His contribution needs definitely to be marked to encourage students to make such contributions.

Reference: 

Gray, K., Waycott, J., Clerehan, R., Hamilton, M., Richardson, J., Sheard, J., & Thompson, C. (2012). Worth it? Findings from a study of how academics assess students. Research in Learning Technology 2012, 2, 21-35- doi: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0/16153