Quality Content on Edmodo Spotlight

Background

Edmodo Spotlight is a repository for Open Educational Resources, (ROER) as well as a source of content which is not considered "open" but is being made available, either for free or a nominal cost, from educators for educators. Edmodo Spotlight hosts and facilitates access to these resources.  

To be truly open, content must satisfy the 5 Rs: the consumers ability to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute the resource. In an article published in the online Research in Leaning Technology journal, titled: Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review,  J.Atenas and L.Havemann discuss certain indicators of quality in the design and implementation of ROERs, and some of these include user evaluation tools, peer review and use of keywords (emphasis mine).

Call to Action

To ensure high quality content is available for Edmodo users, users such as the Luminary community can provide the most meaningful, authentic reviews. To help with the review process, I've come up with some suggestions.

When I introduce  Edmodo and blogging with my students, I use an acronym, R.A.M.E to remind them than any comment should be relevant, appropriate, meaningful and edited. The same is a good start for reviewing teacher created content. 

RELEVANT: When providing feedback, be sure that you have actually looked at the contributor's resource and that your comment reflects that - what is something you liked? what didn't you understand? what connections can you make to your own possible implementation? in short, is your comment relevant to the resource you are reviewing?

APPROPRIATE: Consider your audience. Is the public comment section the right place for your feedback? As fellow teachers, we may be reluctant to give negative feedback publicly - I know I am. When I see an issue that I feel needs to be addressed by the resource owner, I direct message them.The good news is, Edmodo understands this reluctance to 'call someone out' and they are building in a messaging option on the product (Spotlight Resource) page.

MEANINGFUL: The Huffington post had a nice article written by Kim Pisolkar about Why Good Job Isn't Good Enough where she provide the analogy of a gift:

Feedback is like a gift... and as with any gift, the initial impression is in the wrapping. Think about how you’d feel receiving a gift not wrapped nicely, just sort of thrown your way with little thought or sincerity. Now think of how differently you might feel receiving a gift that is lovingly wrapped, given with pride and thoughtful consideration. That analogy represents the difference between giving ordinary, bland feedback like “Nice job” and delivering effective, sincere feedback that actually tells a person what was good.

The article goes onto cite the SBI model developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. SBI is an acronym for situation, behavior, and impact:

1. Describe the situation where the behavior was observed.
2. Describe the behavior- the specific and factual actions or interactions that were observed by you or others.
3. Describe the impact - the effect the behavior had on others such as clients or team members, and/or the results.

So please include meaningful, perhaps even actionable feedback. Contributors are able to update their resources in Spotlight and often will based on community feedback.Your words do have an impact. 

EDITED: In general, please try to make sure your review comments are edited.

After studying Socrates, my students also added the final two letters of the acronym: N and N to make RAMENN - is your input nice and necessary? Are your comments, even criticism delivered with kindness? 

When you look at at resource in Edmodo, you have the option to rate it 1-5 stars. You can also post a comment, preferably using guidelines similar to what I have outlined above.

A final note about keywords. Users, content consumers, look for and find content using keywords. When you are reviewing a resource, if you notice they are missing some valuable keywords, please let the owner know. If they add them, your suggestion might make the difference for someone looking for just the right amazing resource.