Passport to Assessment for Learning

Presenter: Peter Rutherford

Date: 31st May 2012

Image © BNIT

A Brisbane North Institute of TAFE •one of the largest institutes of its kind in the state

•seven campuses, numerous delivery points and services more than 30 000 students.

Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE (Townsville)

Tropical North Institute of TAFE (Cairns)

Photo © BNIT

The Team  •Learning Advisor•Learning Technologies Advisor•Multimedia Manager•Graphic Designer•ICT Initiatives team

Wealth of experience developing commercial and institute based online learning.

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What we do•Had developed a prototype as an investigation of Bloom’s taxonomy with higher-order thinking as the focus but were all too aware of limitations for delivery.•Availability of NBN allowed us to think we could extend the boundaries and bring our concept to fruition

NBN E-Learning ProgramsThis program gave us the opportunity to:

Develop the prototype for trial of a scenario-based assessment task which relies upon

high capacity connection for

delivery and recovery of learner

responses.

Image © BNIT

What we were trying to achieve•To develop an innovative learning and assessment that can be used:

– In f2f classes – In blended or online learning

•Delivered on line via HD video. •Student provides oral responses.

Photo©Department of Education, Trainingand Employment

Image © BNIT

• Responses are captured online• Responses are stored for teacher to download, listen to and evaluate.

The assessment task•Tourism competencies

– Work with customers and

colleagues– Work in a socially diverse

environment•Created a scaffold into which new scenarios and content can be inserted for different industry focus

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Outcomes•Completion of learning content (BR)•Completion of self-assessment review tool

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• Scenario shot in HD video

• Developed technology to capture and store audio responses

• Enabled the teacher to download and listen to responses

http://my.tafe.qld.gov.au/tqaccess/logon.aspx

Trialling•Numerous in house trials to iron out bugs (eg >2MB not capturing)•Trialing on Learning Hub eChamps at 100 Mbps•Trial at home environment at 54 Mbps •Still to trial in NBN enabled area on Customer Service Staff for test purposes and their PD.

Issues•Competing priorities for others – not seeing the value•Cut backs in directorate•Technical solution•Need for testing still•Pairing back – html5, number of scenarios•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgLu0VEiKtk •http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ZvkrLkQxY&feature=related

Where to next? •Complete purchase of media server to capture audio and video responses from students •Develop additional scenarios •Re-develop content to be either industry specific or more generic

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Requirements• Microphone and headset for the student• The student PC needs an audio card with

microphone input. • The student PC requires Adobe Flash Player 10

or later. The student also is required to allow security settings be changed. Flash Player will prompt the student to allow it access to their microphone.

 

Method of capturing and storing audio files

Flash Player•The Adobe Flash (SWF) file is embedded within an HTML page and is accessible on any Internet browser through an LMS. During the course of the assessment Flash Player captures the data streaming through the microphone and stores it within as a Byte Array. •The student can also listen to their captured assessment through Flash Player.  

• The captured data then gets streamed out of the Flask Player to a PHP script on a different server.

• Flash Player loads a security policy file from the server to allow it cross-domain communication.

PHP•On a separate server a PHP script awaits contact from the Flash Player. •Flash Player uses the POST method to transfer data on an application/octet-stream. •The PHP script receives the stream and saves the data to a WAV file.

• The PHP script also receives variables to determine which student the audio belongs to.

• A second PHP script is accessed from  the LMS by teachers. This web page when viewed displays students usernames who have completed the assessment and makes the WAV files accessible for the teacher to listen to.

SCORM•The Flash file and web page containing it are packaged into SCORM 1.2 package and imported to any compliant LMS. •JavaScript is used to communicate between the SWF and the SCORM API in the LMS to obtain valuable information. The student username is retrieved from the LMS so Flash and PHP know who is completing the assessment. •SCORM is also used to track that the student completed the assessment so that the student cannot come back and make a second attempt.