Assessment/Evaluation
Assessment/Evaluation
Your summative/formal/graded assessment in this Course will be by means of a 3000 word analytical essay that you will submit during the final week of the Course. Clear instructions for submitting the essay will be detailed later for you.
The subject of your essay can be chosen by yourself, or you can choose to answer one that I will provide for you.
If you wish to choose your own topic you will need to have it approved by me by the end of the 7th week (April 15th) of the course (don't worry, I will remind you). You may discuss possibilities for your own essay topic with me via email or by using Moodle messaging.
You are encouraged to wait until week 4 or 5 (March 29th-April 5th) to choose your essay topic for summative assessment in order that you have a chance to explore the various ideas associated with the course themes.
Assessment is FOR Learning
As this course progresses, you will be asked regularly to make contributions to various activities such as your private journal dealing with a particular theme, or a discussion forum or a blog posting. You will also be asked to contribute definitions and concepts to the Working Definitions glossary at several points throughout the Course. All of these activities, together with our ideas, our responses to other people's ideas, our shared thoughts on the various readings and films throughout the course represent formative assessment activities. In other words they contribute to our/your learning, to the construction of our/your understanding of culture and, in turn, to your capacity to successfully undertake the essay topic for your summative assessment. Moreover, I and your fellow students on the course will be able to support your learning, to comment on your ideas and emerging understandings and, overall, to ensure that this online learning experience is as well, if differently, supported as face-to-face learning. Even though your communications within the course activities are not part of the formal, summative assessment, the more you contribute to the communications within this course, the better your learning and the more written material and ideas you will have when it comes time to write your essay. We will have people in this course from different departments or disciplines and various backgrounds--these factors will contribute in an exciting way to the differences we have in understanding certain texts and readings. You are encouraged to consider the communicative elements of this course as interesting arenas in which to explore ideas about the themes we encounter.