The Minute E-mail is a technique modeled on one of the most popular immediate classroom assessments often called The Minute Paper or the Half Sheet Response (Angelo and Cross).
The intent of the Minute E-mail is to get some specific information from students by asking them a short question that they can respond to in 60-seconds or so. The student responses give the instructor immediate feedback that allows for assessment of a particular learning objective, a teaching technique, student attitudes, or anything else the instructor wants to know about.
I will suggest one particular use for this assessment strategy that is a bit different from the common classroom applications; I call this "what is your plan today?" To succeed in my online classes, students must log into the course and be active participants at least three different days per week. So, I want to encourage students to log in regularly and to have a plan for what they want to accomplish while in the course.
I used the Intelligent Agent function in D2L to implement this assessment. More-or-less, the Intelligent Agent function in D2L automatically sends e-mails to students who meet certain criteria. Since I wanted each student to get an e-mail immediately on their next login to the course, I set the criteria to send an e-mail to all students who had not logged into the course for at least one day (this will capture all students). I'll also add some advice I received from Jim Piccolini: don't add all student e-mail addresses to the "To:" field since th
is may cause multiple e-mails to go to each student. Instead, insert "{InitiatingUser}" in the "To:" field of the e-mail. This will generate one e-mail for each student who meets the criteria.
The e-mail I sent using the Intelligent Agent included the following:
There are, of course, other ways to implement this Minute E-mail assessment strategy in D2L. You could use the Quiz or Survey tool to design a quick short answer question and announce the assessment in an e-mail or by using a news item. You could also employ the conditional release function in D2L to force students to complete the Minute E-mail assessment before opening content, accessing discussions, or whatever makes sense based on your own course design. I will explore these options in future posts.
I am interested in hearing from anyone who has ideas for uses of the Minute E-mail assessment or about how to implement this sort of assessment in an online course. If you have ideas, please feel free to e-mail me (eric.salahub@frontrange.edu).
In Good Spirit,
Eric
The intent of the Minute E-mail is to get some specific information from students by asking them a short question that they can respond to in 60-seconds or so. The student responses give the instructor immediate feedback that allows for assessment of a particular learning objective, a teaching technique, student attitudes, or anything else the instructor wants to know about.
To read about some of the specific uses for this assessment technique, you can do a Google search for "uses for the minute paper" or link here: One Minute Papers.
I will suggest one particular use for this assessment strategy that is a bit different from the common classroom applications; I call this "what is your plan today?" To succeed in my online classes, students must log into the course and be active participants at least three different days per week. So, I want to encourage students to log in regularly and to have a plan for what they want to accomplish while in the course.
I used the Intelligent Agent function in D2L to implement this assessment. More-or-less, the Intelligent Agent function in D2L automatically sends e-mails to students who meet certain criteria. Since I wanted each student to get an e-mail immediately on their next login to the course, I set the criteria to send an e-mail to all students who had not logged into the course for at least one day (this will capture all students). I'll also add some advice I received from Jim Piccolini: don't add all student e-mail addresses to the "To:" field since th
is may cause multiple e-mails to go to each student. Instead, insert "{InitiatingUser}" in the "To:" field of the e-mail. This will generate one e-mail for each student who meets the criteria.The e-mail I sent using the Intelligent Agent included the following:
I want to know your purpose for logging into the course today. Please compose an e-mail to me (esalahub@ucourses.com) and add a few lines telling me what you hope to accomplish while in the course today. Please be as thorough as you can with a 1-2 minute reply.I am not an expert with the Intelligent Agent function so I told my students that I was testing something new and that they should let me know about any glitches. I had very good luck with this immediate assessment strategy. Students even seemed to like the fact that I took the time to ask them this question!
There are, of course, other ways to implement this Minute E-mail assessment strategy in D2L. You could use the Quiz or Survey tool to design a quick short answer question and announce the assessment in an e-mail or by using a news item. You could also employ the conditional release function in D2L to force students to complete the Minute E-mail assessment before opening content, accessing discussions, or whatever makes sense based on your own course design. I will explore these options in future posts.
I am interested in hearing from anyone who has ideas for uses of the Minute E-mail assessment or about how to implement this sort of assessment in an online course. If you have ideas, please feel free to e-mail me (eric.salahub@frontrange.edu).
In Good Spirit,
Eric
