Apgar106

I’ve been thinking about how we could use Gardner Campbell’s Apgar test in ds106. He uses it as a way of taking the class temperature at the beginning of a session, a quick gauge of their collective readiness. It also serves as a way of communicating expectations:

1. Did you read the material for today’s class meeting carefully? No=0, Yes, once=1, Yes, more than once=2

Thinking back to my days as a student, I wonder if I ever would have thought of reading something more than once. But this puts the idea out there, with a suggestion that it’s a good thing.

So what would we want to suggest in ds106? I think we should do more to build community and encourage interaction. We can always push for more creativity and more challenges. We want people to know that there is no one right way to do anything, and that they have a lot of leeway to do things their way. I brainstormed a few ideas:

How often did you check the class blog feed?
How frequently did you leave meaningful comments on classmates’ blogs?
Did you challenge yourself by using a new tool or program?
Did you find a creative way to re-imagine an assignment?
Did you make a new assignment?
Did you build on the work of other participants?
Did you collaborate on an assignment?
Did you promote your work on Twitter?
Did you interact with the #ds106 community on Twitter?

I’d have to think about a scale for the responses too. I want people to check the blog feed every day, and to leave a couple comments every day, so those are easy. Making new assignment should perhaps come off the list. When it comes to trying new things, maybe an  online tool would be worth one and experimenting with a new program could be two. How often should people remix the work of others or collaborate? I’m not sure that they fit in a weekly scale. But maybe they could. This will take some fine-tuning.

Then there’s the matter of delivery. Because ds106 never meets as a class, it would be more of an online weekly checkup. Maybe it could be sent out in an email as a Google form, or as an online survey. That’s a technical aspect I’ll have to investigate. Maybe the weekly average could show up on the website as a sidebar widget or something. Something to think about.