Group items tagged

not limited to) age and ability level, multiple intelligences, didactic conversation, student

Maintains an online social presence that is available, approachable, positive, interactive, and sincere (SREB C.3, Varvel VII.A)

The primary purpose of the formative assessment process, as conceived in this definition, is to provide evidence that is used by teachers and students to inform instruction and learning during the teaching/learning process.

The students must be actively involved in the systematic process intended to improve their learning. The process requires the teacher to share learning goals with students and provide opportunities for students to monitor their ongoing progress.

Helping students think meta-cognitively about their own learning fosters the idea that learning is their responsibility and that they can take an active role in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own progress.

Descriptive feedback should be about the particular qualities of student learning with discussion or suggestions about what the student can do to improve. It should avoid comparisons with other pupils

In peer-assessment, students analyze each others’ work using guidelines or rubrics and provide descriptive feedback that supports continued improvement.

Formative assessment is not an adjunct to teaching but, rather, integrated into instruction and learning with teachers and students receiving frequent feedback.

Collaboration: A classroom culture in which teachers and students are partners in le

teachers must provide the criteria by which learning will be assessed so that students will know whether they are successfully progressing toward the goal

A teacher needs to have modeled good feedback with students and talked about what acceptable and unacceptable comments look like in order to have created a safe learning environment.

formative assessment be regarded as a process rather than a particular kind of assessment.

A further benefit of providing feedback to a peer is that it can help deepen the student’s own learning. However, student- and peer-assessment should not be used in the formal grading process.

feedback

Networks with others involved in online education for the purpose of professional growth

Maintains an online social presence that is available, approachable, positive, interactive, and sincere

• Assists students with technology used in the course (Varvel III.C)

Knows the content of the subject to be taught and understands how to teach the content to students

Designs the structure of the course and the presentation of the content to best enhance student learning, including using unit/lesson overviews and reviews, using patterns in lesson sequencing, and using appropriate visual web design techniques

Has experienced online learning from the perspective of a student

Aligns assessment with course objectives

At the level of ongoing classroom assessments, formative applications involve what students have mastered and what they still need to learn. At the level of periodic interim/benchmark assessments, they involve which standards students are not mastering and where teachers can improve instruction right away. At the level of annual state/district standardized assessments, they involve where and how teachers can improve instruction—next year.

A grade of D+, on the other hand, may be sufficient to inform a decision about a student's athletic eligibility, but it is not capable of informing the student about the next steps in learning.

Students learn best when they monitor and take responsibility for their own learning. This means that teachers need to write learning targets in terms that students will understand.

Specific, descriptive feedback linked to the targets of instruction and arising from the assessment items or rubrics communicates to students in ways that enable them to immediately take action, thereby promoting further learning.

assessor has translated the learning targets into assessments that will yield accurate results.

Ongoing classroom assessments serve both formative and summative purposes and meet students' as well as teachers' information needs

Although it may seem as though having more assessments will mean we are more accurately estimating student achievement, the use of multiple measures does not, by itself, translate into high-quality evidence.

Bias can also creep into assessments and erode accurate results. Examples of bias include poorly printed test forms, noise distractions, vague directions, and cultural insensitivity.

have considered questioning the accuracy of

Moreover, some teachers have noticed how students who were good writers become wooden when writing under the influence of a rubric. Dona Patrick, an elementary school teacher noticed that while her sixth grade students did well on their state writing test, those students who had been natural writers, those students who had “stylistic voices full of humor and surprises, produced less interesting essays when they followed the rules [as outlined in a rubric]” (Mathews).

Rubrics can be designed to measure either product or process or both; and, they can be designed with dimensions describing the different levels of that “deep learning” so valued in WAC programs.

cross the board; meanwhile, the teacher that uses specific rubrics is always composing new descriptions of quality work, but their students have cle

Consequentially, when rubrics are published in the classroom, students striving to achieve the descriptions at the higher end of the scale in effect guide their own learning. We must keep in mind, however, that other aspects of good pedagogical practice play into student success: rubrics that are outside of the students “zone of proximal development” are useless to the students.

Usually a numerical value is assigned to each point on a scale. You can weight dimensions differently if you feel that one dimension is more important than another. There are two ways in which you can express this value judgment: 1. You may give a dimension more weight by multiplying the point by a number greater than one. For example, if you have four dimensions (content, organization, support, conventions) each rated on a six-point scale, and you wish to emphasis the importance of adequate support, you could multiply the support score by two. 2. You may devise scales of unequal length, which would mean that the shorter scales would count less than the longer ones. For example, organization, support, and content could each be rated on separate 6 point scales, while punctuation and / or spelling could be rated on separate 3 point scales. A paper that was well organized and punctuated would yield 6 for organization and 3 for punctuation. A paper that was perfectly punctuated but poorly organized might yield a 3-3 score.

Or you can build your own rubric from scratch—convert existing revision or discovery heuristics into rubrics; convert comments that used to show up on A, B, C, D, and F papers into descriptive phrases, or start completely anew. The Chicago Public Schools web-site offers simple guidelines to follow when designing your own rubric. If you visit the web page I cut and pasted this from, you will find that each item is hyperlinked to a full explanation of the step.

Clearly defining the purpose of assessment and what you want to assess is the first step in developing a quality rubric. The second step is deciding who your audience is going to be. If the rubric is primarily used for instruction and will be shared with your students, then it should be non-judgemental, free of educational jargon, and reflect the critical vocabulary that you use in your classroom.

well-designed rubrics help instructors in all disciplines meaningfully assess the outcomes of the more complicated assignments that are the basis of the problem-solving, inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogy replacing the traditional lecture-based, teacher-centered approach in tertiary education.

they should articulate the vital features that they are looking for and make these features known to the student

The result is many students struggle blindly, especially non-traditional, unsuccessful, or under-prepared students, who tend to miss many of the implied expectations of a college instructor, expectations that better prepared, traditional students readily internalize.

rubrics, in effect, dehumanize the act of writing. According to Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, “rubrics promote ‘mechanical instruction in writing’ that bypasses ‘the human act of composing and the human gesture of response’” (Mathews).

if we have assigned ourselves the task of getting a good rubric to use, we need a rubric to judge our performance—that is, we need a meta-rubric to assess our rubric.

When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental” (Montgomery).

When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental” (Montgomery).

When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental” (Montgomery). T

Moreover, some teachers have noticed how students who were good writers become wooden when writing under the influence of a rubric.

A rubric with two or more separate scales is called an analytical rubric, as it takes apart or breaks up the rating system for each trait; a rubric that uses only a single scale is called a holistic rubric. A holistic rubric is more efficient and the best choice when criteria overlap and cannot be adequately separated; an analytical rubric, however, will yield more detailed information about student performance and, therefore, will provide the student with more specific feedback.

A rubric with two or more separate scales is called an analytical rubric, as it takes apart or breaks up the rating system for each trait; a rubric that uses only a single scale is called a holistic rubric. A holistic rubric is more efficient and the best choice when criteria overlap and cannot be adequately separated; an analytical rubric, however, will yield more detailed information about student performance and, therefore, will provide the student with more specific feedback.

The issue of weighting may be another area in which you can enlist the help of students. At the beginning of the process, you could ask a student to select to select which aspect she values the most in her writing and weight that aspect when you assess her paper.

While many educators make a compelling argument for sharing rubrics with students, others worry that doing so will encourage formulaic writing. That “rubric” is listed in most thesauruses as a synonym for “formula” does nothing to dismantle such fears. Well-designed rubrics, though, should not do this; unfortunately, most state issued rubrics used in secondary school standardized testing are poorly designed rubrics that list specific static elements encouraging students to simply make sure their essays have those features.

Students in this sample reported that their attitudes toward self-assessment became more positive as their experiences with the process accumulated.

elp students develop that all-important ability of looking objectively at their work and then making changes that improve its quality

Students individually assess each other's contribution using a predetermined list of criteria.

• Focuses on the development of student’s judgment skills.

2) When assignments are low stakes

When they self-assessed, these students reported that they checked their work, revised it, and reflected on it more generally. Before this class their self-assessment efforts were “relatively mindless.”

Forcing’ the individual student to assess their own behaviour, as opposed to others is more constructive – it supports the aim of developing collaboration skills, along with the knowledge component.

Goal setting Guided practice with assessment tools Portfolios

t is helpful to introduce students to the concepts and elements of assessment against specified criteria in the first weeks of class when you explain the unit of study outline

Rees admitted the guidelines were clearly outlined as to how to grade, and that the grades he received were accurate, yet it was the quality of comments that he felt was lacking,

When learners are mature, self-directed and motivated.

Grading is based on a predetermined process,

• Students will have a tendency to award everyone the same mark.

This also highlights the need to fully prepare and equip students for their own assessment and for the assessment of others.

• Agreed marking criteria means there can be little confusion about assignment outcomes and expectations.

• Additional briefing time can increase a lecturer’s workload

“The difference between self-assessment and giving the teacher what he or she wants was a recurring theme

They also recommend that teachers share expectations for assignments and define quality.

There are ways of framing and then using self-assessment

The instructor must explain expectations clearly to them before they begin.

Portfolios

• Encourages students to reflect on their role and contribution to the process of the group work

“Professors in the trenches tend to hold their monopoly on evaluating their students’ work dearly, since it helps them control the classroom better by reinforcing their power and expertise,” supports a cognitive and instructor-focused learning orientation.

There are many options still to be explored. Time will tell.

critically review their own work with an eye for improvement.