We caught up with Dr. Mary Lynne Bennett, Assistant Professor of Piano and Music Education, after hearing enthusiastic reviews about her recent brown bag lunch session entitled, "How the Tools of Taskstream LAT Worked for Me and My Students." The LAT (Learning Achievement Tools) is the half of TaskStream that allows evaluation of student assignment submissions, as well as portfolio creation and review.
Dr. Bennett was the first person on campus to use LAT, in the fall of 2008. She has graciously agreed to serve as an informal mentor for other faculty on campus who would like to try out this tool. She can be reached at Mary.Bennett@fairmontstate.edu or at extension 4179 in 242 Wallman Hall.
What prompted you to try LAT?
I saw a demonstration of LAT that was being given to the education department this past summer and saw all of the features associated with it and decided that I needed to try this with my classes. I spoke with Erica (Harvey) and the Taskstream Mentoring Services and had course templates set up for two of my music education classes in the fall and one for this spring. LAT focuses on portfolio building, and since my majors are education students and have to build portfolios for the education department, I wanted them to gain some experience doing this with an electronic portfolio tool. Also, it has a simple WYSIWIG (“what you see is what you get”) webpage builder, and our Introduction to Music Technology students do build a webpage as one of their class projects.
We’ll get right to it. A lot of folks HATE trying out new technology. So, could you explain up front what your worst experience was with the tool?
I was trying to create a complex assessment involving a combination of self-evaluations, peer evaluations and faculty evaluations of teaching videos. I spent much time setting this up with mentoring services, and then the students ended up having difficulty figuring out how to compress their half-hour long teaching videos so they could post them in Taskstream for evaluation. In the end, they ended up passing around hard copies of the DVD’s because none of them could figure out how to compress, even though I had shared step-by-step instructions that Taskstream had sent me. I don’t fault the LAT for having size limitations though.
What was a pleasant surprise you discovered by using LAT? In other words, what could this tool do that you hadn't expected it to be able to?
I was pleased to discover that LAT could handle my complex assessments with multiple reviewers. I team teach the Introduction to Music Technology so it was easy for me to set it up so both of us could evaluate different assignments. I could also transfer and edit rubrics from assignment to assignment and class to class. I didn’t have to create each one from scratch.
What's something you know now about this TaskStream tool that you wish you had known before you started out your trial?
I wish I had known how to navigate the more advanced features because that would have saved me time on the phone with mentoring services. I think that more formal training in Taskstream would be beneficial for any faculty member planning on using Taskstream LAT. I did have a couple of web conferences’ worth of training, but could have used more.
What's one feature you believe other faculty would benefit from using?
There isn’t just one. Taskstream LAT has a versatile rubric builder, a lesson and unit plan builder, a custom form builder (which was invaluable for my assessments), a webpage builder and a portfolio builder. All of these tools could prove very useful in many different academic disciplines.
Here’s the million dollar question: Do you think using this TaskStream feature could help to improve student learning?
I found that as I created my assessments on Taskstream, it made me re-evaluate all of the assessments I was using in my course and ask myself if I am truly measuring what I hope to measure. It helped aid me in giving students more specific feedback on their assignments and clarified the assessment process for the students. I created a lesson plan template for my elementary music methods class which helped students more easily tie their lessons to national standards and West Virginia CSO’s because Taskstream LAT is a standards-based assessment system. This streamlined the process for the students and helped them more clearly see the connections between the materials they were using and the standards they were meeting. Also, Taskstream LAT can report on course outcomes being met, so we will be able to more efficiently track how students are meeting course outcomes.
Finally, if you were asked the question by a colleague, "What's in it for me?" what would be your response regarding their using this feature of TaskStream? And what response would you give a student who asked the same question?
Taskstream LAT course templates can be easily transferred from one semester to another. Once a course template is created, it can be copied and easily edited and adapted to reflect course changes. After the first semester of creating the course template, I am hoping that it will save me time in evaluating students….it definitely saved myself and the students a lot of paper/printing! With Taskstream LAT, students will have one central repository to save all of their coursework from year to year. Students may continue to subscribe to Taskstream after graduation and have their electronic portfolio available for prospective employers to view. They may use Taskstream to build and customize their own webpages, lesson/unit plans, professional portfolios, etc. When students see a Taskstream course portfolio, they can see a holistic picture of what is expected of them in a course. All of the assignments/projects are presented in a simple outline form and directions, deadlines, submissions and evaluations are all available in the same place.
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