Comments on: How can we make assessment more flexible and meaningful?

By: It seems I’m always too slow when it comes to grading

It seems I’m always too slow when it comes to grading — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:14:08 +0000

[...] completely failed to respond to or even acknowledge some pretty amazing feedback for an admittedly tentative post I wrote floating an alternative grading structure for essays. I feel like a terrible host, and even [...]

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:05:02 +0000

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Kate

http://educationonline-101.com

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:50:50 +0000

ACK! Sorry to neglect these responses for so long. And I really don't have the time or mental bandwidth to do them justice now. I wrote a simple post excerpting some of your excellent ideas and just posted it.

By: Gardner

Gardner — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:21:21 +0000

I’ve been playing around with the idea of “social assessment” lately, a phrase that’s my own little cognitive mashup of oral examinations, online publication, peer review, and shared inquiry. I do think the teacher has a vital role to play in evaluating the work, but that role has to be in the context of the class’s 1) knowledge of itself as a group exploring the possibilities of communal mental activity (Bruner’s phrase–he still rocks my world) and b) use of itself as a collegial group (I got this from a presentation at the NITLE summit last year that insisted our students need to learn to be good colleagues for each other).

I tried something along these lines in my Film, Text, and Culture class in summer 06 and spring 07 when I had students post their final papers online *and* for the second half of these papers cite and link to specific blog posts their peers had written earlier in the term. I’ve spoken about this assignment several times but I should probably blog about it at length–aligning all the parts is a bit tricky to understand (and of course tricky to do as well). I’m certainly not satisfied with all the bits and pieces. For one thing, I didn’t do any marginal commentary on the essays; instead, I offered a paragraph-long narrative evaluation, which didn’t feel like quite enough to me. On the other hand, the folks who did well with the assignment did *extremely* well, and there were more of them than usual. Or so it seemed to me.

I did a presentation on “Proof That Matters” for the Prove It! area in the recent K12Online Conference. I hope to post those materials on my own blog soon, but for now, you can find them by searching k12online 2008. Or I could be less lazy and just put the link in! http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=301

I’ll be doing a presentation with Chuck Dziuban in February that will examine more of these questions. Taleb’s “The Black Swan” has been pretty crucial for both of us lately in thinking about this stuff.

By: Elena

Elena — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:20:58 +0000

Hi Brian and readers,
This is what I/we do at MITUPV Exchange (which is a social network established in 2000, it might look a little bit old-fashioned but it was there long before Facebook): there are several assignments: we take into account their level of participation and their replies to other people’s stuff. But the most important one is a final video they have to upload by the end of each semester (groupwork). They’re given a deadline. So what’s the problem with this? that most of them (or many) waited till the very end so there was this typical frantic flurry of very last minute activity. We’re changing our point of view: we’re telling them that we grade not only the final product (the video) but the amount of social conversation it triggers. This way they know that if they upload their stuff at the very last minute, chances are they won’t get that many comments from the other side (MIT or UPV) than those who upload their assignments long before the deadline. We want to compare results, so we can back it up with figures, but we can see there’s a change in their attitude.

By: leighblackall

leighblackall — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:00:54 +0000

Hi Brian,

I had thought trackback was auto on your blog for some reason.. but I blogged my response to this… now onto your OER post

By: Julià Minguillón

Julià Minguillón — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:17:48 +0000

hi,

as usual, there is no a universal solution; when you assignment is about solving some exercises with only one possible answer, you cannot allow such solution to be posted and discussed; if you are more in a discussion or debate based answer, then it is possible to take care of who is answering first, who is adding real comments and who is just copying and pasting, we are indeed already doing that

regarding students grading themselves, we allow them to do that when they work in groups: they grade themselves and the other group members, and they are very strict, we have seen that teacher should not be the only one grading students

By: Andre Malan

Andre Malan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:30:28 +0000

As someone who is currently going through the constant barrage of assessment/evaluation I agree that there is something massively wrong with what is being done at the moment.

I still think that the most useful motivator is real world contribution.

I also think that peer-evaluation (done properly) can be very powerful as in the long run it gives you the tools to look at your own work from the perspective of others.

By: Dean Shareski

Dean Shareski — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:06:24 +0000

I have a comment about deadlines and flexibility in online courses. When I first began teaching online I valued the ability for students to have all the assignments and complete them whenever. I’ve now changed my thinking on that. Because a huge element of my course values transparency and social learning, all work is online and open to all. If someone submits something at the end of the course, it penalizing the other students who did not have a chance to learn from that student. If assessment is really FOR learning, it must occur with enough time for the learner and others to learn from it. Otherwise we’re just talking about evaluation which is really not the same thing.

By: Tania

Tania — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:59:40 +0000

Brian…totally agree with the idea of building on ones learning…i know you are referring to the university setting but this relates to secondary students (and younger) as well. I am fascinated with the ‘project’ approach to learning…and feel that in my own education something like the anthropology, was missing in my schooling…subjects compartmentalized and segregated….as distinct entities…(i digress as usual-here’s a great book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/080704623X/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link-oops long url-sorry)

ANyway, I’ve been trying for the past few years to figure out a fair and fruitful/meaningful way to assess student processes….(its like taking pictures of what you see and not what you think others want to see!)