Resources for Participatory Learning & Assessment in Online Learning

 By Daniel Hickey

As requests for this info trickle in, I am going to put it all up in this blog post.  Participatory Learning and Assessment (PLA) is a situative framework for engaging and assessing online learners.  We have been refining it since 2008 when I first started teaching online.  It has been refined and studied with a series of internal grants and other grants from Google and the federal CARES Act to support this work. Many thanks to the funders, my doctoral advisees in IU Learning Sciences, and my colleagues at Indiana University High School. 

PLA is intended to ensure "generative" learning that transfers readily and widely.  It draws directly on the design principles from Randi Engle (1965-2012) for productive disciplinary engagement and expansive framing. It streamlines or automates formative and summative assessment and reduces inefficient private instructor-student interaction. This frees up instructors to focus more efficiently on public interaction with learners. PLA avoids dreary discussion forums and instead relies on instructor and student social annotations directly on course readings and student work.

Here are links to recent resources in a suggested order for newcomers who want to learn how to use this approach or its elements:

• Hickey, D. T., Duncan, J., Gaylord, C., Hitchcock, C., Itow, R., & Stephens, S. (2020).  gPortfolios: A pragmatic approach to online asynchronous assignments. Information and Learning Sciences, 121 (5/6), 273-283.  This is a very introductory piece, written with IUHS educators and intended for educators with little grounding in learning theory
• Chartrand, G. T., & Hickey, D. T. (2021) Responsive engagement and virtual learner assessment (REVLA). This is an introductory open online self-paced course for educators in the Canvas LMS for IU Expand.  It has separate modules on engagement, formative assessment, and summative assessment It teaches social annotation and helps tame the complexity of Canvas' quiz engine.  Requires an IU email address or a guest account obtained here.
• Hickey, D. T., & Harris, T. (2021, ongoing) Responsive engagement and virtual learner assessment (REVLA). A version of the same course but for Google Classroom.  Requires a personal Gmail address (not a school address).
• Hickey, D. T., Chartrand, G. T., & Andrews, C. D. (2020).  Expansive framing as a pragmatic theory for instructional design.  Educational Technology Research and Development, 68 (2), 751-782. Translates PLA design principles into steps.  Written for instructional designers and others grounded in cognitive and constructivist learning theories.
• Hickey, D. T. & Harris, T. (2021).  Re-imagining online grading, assessment, and testing using situated cognition. Distance Education, 42 (2), 290-309.  Focuses on assessment in a special issue on assessment edited by Dianne Conrad. Translates assessment principles into straightforward steps.
• Hickey, D. T., & Lam, C. (2023, April 15). Culturally-sustaining educational assessment: A new approach to enduring challenges. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Extends PLA using ideas from Agarwal and Sengupta-Irving (2019).

I am happy to answer any questions about these at dthickey@indiana.edu