{"id":480,"date":"2026-10-13T12:20:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/?p=480"},"modified":"2026-10-13T12:21:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:21:52","slug":"assessing-collaborative-learning-in-2035","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/assessing-collaborative-learning-in-2035\/","title":{"rendered":"Assessing Collaborative Learning in 2035"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Note: Woman with futuristic holographic displays. (n.d.). [Photograph]. In Google Images<\/em>. https:\/\/encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTKBziQldxa5Prj59Wr69ZpjHkCEbZb3RoxO79GdPieUA&s=10 <\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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What if we could redesign assessment from the ground up?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m writing as faculty and department coordinator in North Island College\u2019s (NIC) Digital Design + Development program area. It\u2019s 2035. Following a post-secondary funding crisis, NIC has reduced its physical footprint. One campus remains, while distance learning and mobile units<\/a> serve dispersed communities. Most courses and grades have been replaced by competency badges (Robert et al., 2026, p.15) earned through collaborative, community-based projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma is a part-time student and mother of three living in a remote Vancouver Island community. She serves as the Knowledge Synthesizer<\/em> on an app project helping kelp farms forecast changes in ocean chemistry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cEmma, new data in your team\u2019s workspace appears to contradict a field observation contributed last week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma reviews both artifacts and discusses the discrepancy with her teammates. Together, they identify a flawed assumption, and Emma revises their plan. The AI tentatively awards her a Critical Analysis<\/em> badge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma questions the attribution. The insight emerged through collaboration, yet the badge appears only on her profile because she recorded the revision. She\u2019ll discuss this with her instructor during the badge review.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How can faculty distinguish individual learning from collective achievement? Can we make learning visible without confusing measurable activity with learning itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 3 in Macgilchrist et al. (2020) provides a foundation for imagining a future in which post-secondary education is reorganized around competencies understood as \u201ca collective, embedded, embodied and political, rather than individual, practice\u201d (p. 83). Knowledge Building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994) emphasizes the collaborative development of shared ideas and solutions. Yet, as Strijbos (2011) notes, assessing individual learning within online collaborative work is challenging. Black Box Assessment (Winstone et al., 2026) advocates for assessing students\u2019 iterative learning journeys rather than just their final products, an approach that learning analytics could support. However, Knight et al. (2014) caution that analytics without a theory of learning measure data, not learning. Meanwhile, Selwyn (2024) questions AI\u2019s ability to interpret learning within complex social contexts.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together, these perspectives highlight the pedagogical promises of online collaborative projects, but this future will only be optimistic if analytics inform faculty judgment rather than replace it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions for classmates:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n