Week 4 reflections

The week 4 was a little stressful at the level of mental work. There were lot many things going on in the life and I was little tensed for the final paper preparation. I read the guidelines 2-3 times. Initially, when I read it for the first time, it looked a lot of work and then with consecutive readings, it starting making more sense to me. But still there are a lot of things those have to be taken care of while preparing the final paper and then the rubrics!  I have started working on the same and will try to meet the guidelines.

There were many interesting readings, video and the podcast. The podcast had some problem. It stopped after a while but then I could listen the whole lecture. This provides and interesting insight into the universal course design which can be accesses successfully by the major chunk of the population including persons defined as disabled under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These lectures also helped me understand that Universal design and accessibility are not synonymous and clarified any confusion between the two terms.  The course and the design of the web  designed such that it can be accesses by the people with disabilities or without disabilities.

This week also helped in getting understanding of  what is the best way of carrying out assessment -9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning, explains Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve.

While brainstorming on Accessibility issue and my role in team, I thought of taking the role of the content specialist and the technologists. I saw that role has already been taken up by anyone else in my group. I decided that I can still take up the role of a technologist as an assistant to the lead. In that case, I will be able to learn as well as fulfill my desire of playing a role of technologist. 

This week, I acted funny and foolish. In the Forum: 4:4 Assessing Collaborative Projects, I misinterpreted the whole question. I took it to be a general group grading in term of a classroom scenario. Then I realized that this particularly ask about the group work we did  the last week. So, I changed my response.

Developing a Rubric

While I was going through the website-Rubistar.com given in the course material of week 4, I synthesized that an instructor or evaluator must follow some steps to develop the rubrics. The first and foremost important task is to define the learning outcome or objective of the product/course/lesson. The instructor/evaluator should define possible highest performance to the lowest performance levels that students would possibly demonstrate. Make sure that each level should be directly observable. To describe each level, as high quality, average, and low, evaluator must have at least three samples of each level. The samples will help to evaluate the students’ performance.

Assign numerical or qualitative, or a combination of both, score for each level, from highest to lowest, or vice versa.

Once each level is determined, give the descriptions on how to use this. Ask students to give the feedback. This will make sure that each level is clearly understood by the students and what each level represents in relation to scores assigned. This kind of feedback ensures that students clearly understand how they are being evaluated and the standards that they are being held accountable to achieve. Rubrics are a great way  to  help students self- diagnose strengths and weaknesses of their own work and  they become part of the "self assessment" process.

Authentic Assessment vs traditional assessment

In this post, I'll try to answer the question raised in Lecture 4. The questions were-What do you think? How will you deal with the issue of assessment? What impact will it have on whatever instructional strategies you select to facilitate learners' accomplishment of learning objectives?

I believe that  authentic assessment examines student performance on worthy intellectual tasks. Projects, case studies, observations and reporting are kind of this. They ‘directly examine student’s  performance on worthy intellectual tasks’ . But this kind of assessment is good for document-based historical inquiry, literature review, research, theoretical based reading and learning, providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. I think that traditional ways of assessment like quiz, multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks and similar tools are good if instructor needs to evaluate student problem-posing and problem-solving in mathematics, experimental research in science and some kind of medical exams. Assessing students only on the authentic or the traditional assessment methods can be unfair. There has to be a balance of these two assessment methods in order to best judge the learning outcomes.

Authentic assessments may provide ‘valid indicators or predictors of academic performance’. Authentic assessment also has the advantage of providing parents and community members with directly observable products and understandable evidence concerning their students' performance. The traditional way of assessment is still used in many areas of learning because of the convenience and low cost.

The instructor has to choose the assessment methods very carefully so that the  academic achievement of learners doesn’t only come in terms of writing ‘right’ answers. The impact of the method choose by an instructor can help learners improve overall performance and if student can craft polished, thorough and justifiable answers, performances or products. 

References

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 2(2). Retrieved April 25, 2012 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 . This paper has been viewed 184,219 times since 11/13/1999