A crucial part of course evaluation is understanding how students learn and what way you can reach them best.
The value of a rubric for instructing a student is great. Rubrics can help the student self-evaluate, as well as, helop the instructor know what areas the student may be weak in. There are several different ways to engage with the student ans help them learn.
We tend to think of grades as a way to evaluate students. One thing this unit hit home with was that the process of assessing, evaluating, and grading all lend insight to the effectiveness of the teacher and the course. I like the idea of adding value to the product we offer students.
Nancy Tosh
Providing a rubric is essential and needed not only as a guide for grading but it provides the students with the guidelines needed for a student to growth.
Rubios allow students to use the rubric to answer their course work. They know what's required for their homework because they can read what they need to include in order to receive credit for answering that questio. it's a guide to getting a good or great grade. The students knows what the instructor is looking for.
I have taken courses before that used Rubric. I now realize that the rubric was not used correctly. I never saw the rubric until the coursework was complete and I was given my final grade based off said rubric. I now see how using rubric effectly will enhance my course and the student's learning capabilitiy.
I do tend to think of a rubric as just a scoring guide. But I do see how it can provide students a clearer picture of expectations. And I agree with the point that the rubric shouldn't be to complex. In addition to the instructor's observation that an overly complex rubric can be confusing to the students, I would imagine that an overly detailed rubric could undermine an assignment by essentially providing a checklist; then students may become preoccupied with checking-off requirements and loose focus on the purpose of the assignment.
The main thing I took away from this module is how to make more effective rubrics. My rubrics feature 3 described levels of mastery and are in ascending order. However, the module indicates that it is better to have an even number of levels of mastery and to lay them out in descending order. I will make these changes to my rubrics moving forward and will then assess the results.
In this module I learned that by providing rubrics to students at the beginning of the assignment will provide them with a guide of what is exactly expected of them for the assignment/project.
I really like the idea of value added assessment, as it compares the growth and learning of each indvidual, vs comparing students to each other. Although in our profession, specific standards have to be met and a certain level of knowledge and understanding has to be achieved to be able to demonstrate readiness to provide skilled interventions as a health professional, I think a lot of value can be obtained from incorporating value added assessment, if for no other reason than to improve students' awareness of their growth and ability to self-assess progress and readiness for the real world. I consistently use rubrics for all of course assignments. I find it alleviates a lot of the stress of the unknown for students and provides them with a road map for success. It also allows me, as an instructor, to provide more objective and specific feedback to the students.
More of my time needs to be spent on evaluations given by student to get their Idea of learning the content.
What I learned from this module about value added assessment is that it is used to compare the student current progress to previous progress. In other words, it measures student growth. Additionally, this is one way teachers can learn whether the style of delivery is helping students to learn and stand as an accountability tool for teacher’s performance. Last, I can use what I learn to assess my differentiation strategies and make adjustment to my other assessment strategies to ensure that I am meeting the learning needs of all my students.
Value-added assessment is important in the ongoing revision of online courses, so that these courses can evaluate if the online course meets the goals and outcomes of the course. Using rubrics for assessments also help both the students and instructor in creating a fair and easy way of assessing students' work, as long as the criteria are not too complicated and easily understood by the students.
A take away regarding value assessments. This tool affords teh instructor to see the difference between where a student started and where they are currently. This a great tool and offers many advantages for the instructor in planning or implementing strategies.
I learned that alternative assessment works best in the online environment because we are able to test the individuals growth over time rather than comparing students with one another. I plan to incorportate more oral presentations as well as essay questions into my online courses.
I learned about the importance of developing and refining rubrics.
Rubrics are used extensively in assessment. Rubrics play a large role in how student learning is evaluated and recorded.
Value added assessments are useful for providing even more information about student learning. Rubrics are a great tool to provide studens with expectations of what is required to acheive a specific grade. Additionally, the use of alternative and authentic assessment provide additional opportunities of assessment that other types of assessments do not offer.
I particularly enjoyed learning about rubrics and how allowing the students to participate in the development of the rubrics can also facilitate learning.
I learned about Value Added Assessment and the difference between Alternative and Authentic Assessment.
