Activities can have a deadline (at the end of the semester) or a precise date (for activities made once in class). There can be individual and/or group activties.
A task can be in a limited number (e.g. there are a linited number of slots for presenting in front of the class) or not (all the students can do them). It's possible to add bonuses.
The idea of dynamic assessment lying behind DAD also means that a student can submit a proposal several times to improve it until it's validated.
The process looks like this:
- the student sumbits a proposal
- the teacher reviews it and
- (s)he validates or rejects it
If the proposal is validated, it's displayed in DAD (including a short feedback).
If the proposal is rejected, the teacher gives a feedback (currently by email) to help the student improve and submit again. This is how DAD allows students to fail.
Implementation of DAD in the course
DAD is used for 2 years (Fall 2015 and Fall 2016) in a Bachelor course given at the University of applied sciences in Geneva.
This 60 hours course is entitled "Formation des usagers en bibliothèques" (course in French) and lasts 10 weeks (6 hours per week). The course is optional. Students learn to give a lecture by doing it (at the end of the semester).
During the first year of teaching this course (Fall 2014), the assessment was classisc Two graded homeworks (checklist and lesson plan - see table 1) during the semester and one final exam (giving a 45 lecture including interaction). But in order to let students learn at their own pace, it seemed not appropriate to define when they had to achieve the mid-term tasks. DAD was designed to let each student work at his own pace.
The rule of the Fall 2016 course was to reach 40 points to get the ECTS credits. The "final exam" remained the same and provided a maximum of 24 points. Students had to complete with additional points collected through activities available and explained in DAD. All activities were optional, but students had to do something to reach 40 points. The upper limit of points reachable with DAD was put to 40 points (even if the total of points in the dashboard was 44). Tasks were divided in groups (see table 1).
Group of activities and related activities numberGroup name | Group description | Activties type | Activities number |
Sharing | students share interesting findings | individual | #1 #2 #3 #4 (+ #5) |
Presenting | students practice before the final exam | individual | #10 #14 |
Explaining | students who dig deeper in the topic | individual | #16 #41 |
Visual Literacy | students use icons not text in slides | individual | #21 #22 #23 (+ #24) |
Video making | students produce a video tutorial | group | #7 #8 |
Checklist | students prepare a lecture | group | #25 #26 #27 #28 |
Lesson plan | students make their lesson | group | #29 #30 #31 #32 |
Peer-grading | students assess someone else's work | group | #33 |
There were 13 individual activities distributed in 4 first groups listed above: five 1-pt activities (+ two 1-pt bonus), five 2-pt activities and one 3-pt activitiy. The list of Fall 2016 activities are in the appendix. Completed activities are in color in DAD's student interface and the other ones remains in black and white. Figure 1 shows DAD's student interface.