Nicenet: A platform for virtual classroom

Introduction:

If you have thought of running a virtual classroom that can supplement your main class, or establishing a class for distance mode education, Nicenet can be one of the best options for you. Ferriman (2013) defines a virtual classroom as ‘an online classroom that allows participants to communicate with one another, view presentations or videos, interact with other participants, and engage with resources in work groups.’ In Nicenet, as Ferriman says, you can communicate with each other creating a loop of responses, share the links and develop a kind of collaborative project.

Nicenet is a free web-based learning environment and classrooms for distance learning programs and collaborative academic work. You can organize a conference that runs a discussion on any topic. In other words, you can run a class at the same time. You can create a class schedule in it and work accordingly. Document sharing is another option available in Nicenet. Once all the class-members get in, it makes a list of emails under class member link and gives the option of sending personal message. And next feature it has is link sharing page, where you can create a stack of links.  

How it works:

It’s very easy to handle. Once you browse www.nicenet.org, you see the dialogue box on your right that has ‘create a class’ and ‘join a class’ options. As a teacher, once you click on ‘create a class’ option, you are required to fill some details i.e., for your class. Select the name of your class, fix the username and password. Once you complete this step, you will get the class key. You will distribute this class key to your students. As a student, they are required to click on ‘join a class’, and then they are further required to insert the class key. Only with this key, they can get into the class. So it makes your classroom safe. Now as a second step, they need to select their username and password. So every student gets a unique username to get in. There’s an optional component for email and name to be filled in. I suggest that you make your students fill these details too so that they won’t be seen as anonymous. This helps you to monitor every student well in your virtual class.

I used Nicenet as my supplementary class to discuss some grammar points, writing issues and so on. I found, in this virtual platform, majority of my students were actively engaging throughout a week discussing the issues being posted. Of course, there were some who used to be passive too due to various reasons such as no internet access and/or computers at home. Another thing I had noticed was those who would remain silent (introvert) in the class would take part in the discussion quite effectively. I didn’t use to talk much about Nicenet in our regular class but every Friday, we used to talk about the issues we discussed in this virtual platform and would acknowledge some best posts.

You may go through FAQs that Nicenet has listed which would be helpful if you get stuck somewhere in a process. 

Every web-resource has some pros and cons. Let’s look into them in this section in bullet forms.

Advantages

1.    This platform is free of charge, run by some internet professionals.

2.    It provides a good learning environment for collaborative project and it can be equally used for distance mode teaching and learning.

3.    You can reach out to every individual student effectively through personal messages and encourage their participation.

4.    It seems secure and safe as the unwanted people without class key cannot enter here.

5.    Since it lists the posts chronologically, for instance - old posts to the recent ones, we can track the recent ones easily and respond accordingly.

Disadvantages

1.    You need to have the HTML coding skill if you wish to insert table or change the colour of the fonts or enlarge them in your posts. You can only write using default plain text.

2.    You can only share the links in link sharing page. If you wish to embed the audios and videos, you won’t be able to do it.

3.    This platform looks quite plain compared to other web tools and platforms.

At the end,

I have found this platform very useful for discussing some issues that come in the class. Students enjoy their autonomy in responding the issues being posted. They also can comment on each other so it also provides opportunity for them to develop their critical thinking and creative writing skills.

Finally, I would like to thank my the then instructor, Robert Elliot from University of Oregon who introduced and used this platform in and/or for ‘Building Teaching Skills Through Interactive Web’ a ten-week long course that I pursued in 2012. This was an e-teacher scholarship program supported by Department of States U.S. Embassy, Nepal, so here, I would like to equally thank US Embassy, Nepal too.

I hope you would find it useful!

Reference

Ferriman, J. (2013, December 12). Characteristics of virtual classroom [Web log].  Retrieved from https://www.learndash.com/characteristics-of-a-virtual-classroom/

Rubric Through Rubistar

Introduction

Rubric is a set of instructions, a list of guidelines and/or a document articulating your expectations. Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2015) defines it as “a title or a set of instructions written in a book, an exam paper etc.” It helps learners get what is expected in a given task. So rubric has to be precise and clear enough to articulate expectations for the task. Andrade (n.d) in a little elaborative way, explains rubric as "…a means of communicating expectations for an assignment, providing focused feedback on works in progress, and grading final products.” In a rubric, we may show the scores/grades that the learners can obtain if they produce the task as stated in the instructions.

Now, you might be little worried that creating a rubric would take really a long time and further, you don't have much time to draft rubric for every potential task designed for your learners. Do not worry! What you need is just to prepare an outline, and the rest a web tool, Rubistar will do for you. It is a free tool supported by a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education. After creating one, you can publish it either in the Rubistar database creating your own account or download/print immediately to use it for your task. The good thing is it has a customizable rubric so you can adapt the rubric as necessity or remove all the categories and begin as a scratch piece of work.

Rubistar has a plenty of headings which you can select and start creating for the task you design. I am sure your students will produce the task in a more precise way meeting the guidelines you have developed in your rubric. Some people may argue that it is more a guided form resultantly, students can’t be creative enough in their tasks. What I believe is every task has some expectations but there’s a plenty of room for learners’ creativity. Rubric only helps learners/ performers provide guidelines; therefore, in a process of doing the task, they gain clarity in the task which leads to their confidence.

How to Create?

There are many tutorials. This link will take you to the tutorial given by the original site. If you wish to watch a video tutorial, you may watch it.

This is the rubric that I had created through Rubistar for my project on minisaga which is in my Webquest. It may be of your interest.

Now let’s look into Ruibstar’s plus and minus sides.

The Plus sides

• Rubistar is free and easy to handle. 
• We can save our rubric in its database for future use or download/print immediately.
• It has customizable templates to create certain type of rubrics which lessons our time to produce.
• Since it’s an encouraging tool from the perspective of its use, teachers might be motivated to create rubrics for most of the tasks that can further generate clarity to the learners.

The Minus Sides

• While printing there’s a Rubistar logo which appears on the very top. The only strategy to avoid it is to copy and paste in word doc and arrange it further that takes quite a long time.
• In the very beginning, we cannot add any columns to the customizable template if we wish to have more than 4 categories unless we publish it.

Finally, yes, rubric can be a big help to guide learners through the task. In the meantime, it also assists teachers to restrict unexpected post-evaluation reactions of the learners. Equally, it mitigates the teachers’ role which may require for further possible clarification of some tasks.

Rubistar can help you! Are you ready to create your rubric?

 References

Andrade, H. (n.d.). What is a rubric? Retrieved from http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=WhatIs

Hornby, A.S. ( 2015). In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (9^th ed.).  Oxford: OUP.