Assessment

1. I found the Ke and Hoadley article interesting in its discussion about online learning communities. A really broad question that I have is, based off of the Kowch and
Schwier (1997) definition, can there truly be classroom-assigned learning communities? After all, the definition says that "natural will" is one of the bonds forming the community, which in my mind, goes against the brute-force creation of a community. Beyond that, though, I think that the framework provided does a good job in pointing out just how many different things could be looked at when talking about assessment in an online learning community.

2. In these assessment articles, there seems to be a lot of exploring going on for a framework or more specific way to evaluate the impact of social computing. However, it seems to me that only the Ke and Hoadley reading in our bunch get anywhere close to mentioning the measure of student performance. The others seem to be more about perception or the "how" of social computing. Is this because we know online learning works and just want to know why (or how to make it better) or is it because it is too hard to narrow down student performance and causation?