Testing media competencies?
Heike Philp started this off by suggesting a test “in the use of state-of-the-art Internet communication technology, an intensive 3-month course, costly, formal, portfolio and assessment with the result of obtaining a certificate,” and she says it would be a “a simple LANCELOT test/ assessment” that would cover “not pedagogical skills but media literacy.”
Heike’s idea may have been partially influenced by a point I made, that knowledge and content should be free as it is in Webheads, and that a viable business model might be to provide training materials for free but charge to certify that they had been learned or taken on to a certain standard. Two examples of this are http://www.w3schools.com/ and MIT, both of whom provide all their content freely available online, yet both charge money for the associated certifications.
I would think that a test of the ability to teach online would have to incorporate pedagogy e.g. what is sometimes called technology integration, maybe along the lines of what Kim Cofino posted yesterday on Twitter: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dd93ftgv_113gx4s68gh
I would think it would have to entail the following elements:
- an inventory of discreet skills to be assessed, along the lines of those that Kim laid out, but certainly an itemization of skills to be tested, so we might start with a list of those.
- a careful item analysis of test items that would address each skill
- sufficient pilot testing that the test would gain credibility, which is the only thing that attract people to pay for it and thus make the entire process economically viable (so much for simplicity)
The idea does seem compelling but I think the first problem is in focusing on the purpose of the test in such a way that inventorying the skills and competencies required becomes manageable.
