Public
Activity Feed Discussions Blogs Bookmarks Files

Ask a question from your peers to help you in your professional work. Seek different points of view on a topic that interests you. Start a thought-provoking conversation about a hot, current topic. Encourage your peers to join you in the discussion, and feel free to facilitate the discussion. As a community of educators, all members of the Career Ed Lounge are empowered to act as a discussion facilitator to help us all learn from each other.

Diagnostic

I like the idea of pre-diagnostic testing. In the English Department we give the students a topic the first day of class and ask for a well-written essay. From the start, we know who knows what an essay is, without even asking! There are basic skills that are required, and as the module suggested, we are able to go forth knowing what skills need to be reviewed.

Assessment

I serve as the Assessment Coordinator for the English Department at a state college. I am very aware of assessment, tools utilized, and how important the results are from using the various assessments. It is very important to determine the best assessment tool for the course. I use a rubric for the assessment of our research papers. By distributing the rubric, the assessment of the research papers by our department goes smoothly and determines end results for me.

Authentic Assessments

How have you used authentic assessment in your online course? I utilize Portfolios to bring student's work together at the end of the course for synthesis. Potfolios are a great way for students to see the results of their cummulative efforts in the course and can provide a better picture of acquired skills than an summative assessment.

Subjective/Objective assessments

How have you used evaluations in your course? Obviously, Objective Assessments are easy to administer and grade. The drawback of this type of assessment in an online environment is that they are commonly open book. There is no way to prevent students from using their resources unless they were administered in person. With respect to Discussion Threads, a rubric is utilized. This is a must to provide guidance and structure to an otherwise completely subjective activity.

Summative Assessments

When conducting summative assessments, what do you believe are the two most important things to consider? 1. What are the most important outcomes? Because Summative Assessments cover a lot of material, the main objectives need to be identified. 2. Questions need to be worded appropriately. for the Summative assessment to be valid and reliable, the type and wording of the assessment must be carefully considered.

Online Assessments

When assessing the use of technology assessment tools in an online learning environment, what do you believe are the three most important things to consider? 1. Does it work? Assessments must be tested and work properly or students will get frustrated. 2. Is it valid? Assessments must test what they intend to tes. 3. Is it reliable? Can students replicate the results at a later time.

Progressive Diagnostics

My question/statement would be, Is it possible or ethical for that matter to utilize summative assessment data from a prior class as a diagnostic for their next class of the same field? It sounds like an arborous task because I would assume that you would have to generalize all the data/questions into categories, much like the SAT's results, e.g English, math, etc, since you cannot provide specifics to the next instructor. We used to do student summaries that we would pass along to the next instructor so they could get a little heads up on students that might need a… >>>

New students

I teach new students in their very first class. Do you feel it's too early to engage them in creating a rubric?

visual rubrics

Can rubrics be use to evaluate appearance of a food item and leave subjectivity out of it?

peer reviews

Can students effectively critique others correctly using the rubric if they don't have the experience with the product?

How to write culinary rubrics

Culinary rubrics can be very difficult to write. How do you take the subjectivity out of certain rubrics?

Rubics

In one of my course I had to create my own rubics. I find it was time consuming but worth it. Actually the rubics is a great feedback for students and how they learn the material.

Modifications based on Evaluations

Each term, I have students who provide evaluations based on quality information that is aimed at helping develop the course. However, I also have students who provide evaluations are that do not yield much relevance in regards to making needed or relevant modifications in the course. Typically, the evaluations by the latter are from those students who chose to avoid taking responsibility in the course although every effort was made by me to help the student. I found that instructors cannot be swayed by such evaluations because it will cause the quality of your course to diminish. Doing so does… >>>

Diagonostic Assessment / Pre-existing skills

This area is of particular interest to me based on my experiences. It seems that there are many students who have trouble in the area of grammar (proper sentence structure, punctuation, spelling, etc.). It seems that the students must first master the skills in English / Language Arts before matriculating into core major courses. Without this, the student's ability to perform at the expected (and reasonable) level will not be satisfied, and the student's grade will suffer, not to mention the onset of frustration by the student and instructor. A few other instructors have shared the same issue, and we… >>>

Subjective evaluation is important

I firmly believe that objective and subjective evaluations are necessary in every class because each offers a level of assessment that gives the instructor a final and accurate picture of the class generally and each student specifically. However, subjective evaluation is important for reasons beyond regular assessments. I found that many students lack the ability to think critically, express themselves in writing, properly structure and organize thoughts, and use proper grammar. While not every instructor teaches English, part of our duty is to ensure that each student is prepared to function in and beyond the class for their overall success.… >>>

Using Rubics

I have found rubrics to be very beneficial in the classroom. Although they are indeed time consuming to create, the outcomes are well worth it. I find they really help the students better understand what is expected of them. It also helps me when grading to ensure I am fair as well as provide appropriate and benefical feedback.

Change

Online Instructors have the same task as other professionals. We will always encounter change. This includes change in technology. We must adapt to these changes and make sure that we are informed and educated and utilize these changes to our advantage.

How I use rubrics

I prefer a hybrid rubric that includes some of the same criteria each time, but has one or two areas that are specific to the assigned task. I also may change the weight of criteria depending on what my teaching has emphasized before a particular assignment.

Technology and Assessment

There are a few points that I consider regarding assessment. The rubrics are a wonderful function in LMS. This provides for consistency in the grading process, and gives a level of equity for each student to make the learning and assessment methods cohesive. However, we must ensure that the rubric point allocations are appropriate. I would recommend that the point spread is even rather than having a large gap in the allocation in order to provide the best assessment. Finally, the course content or subject matter has a great deal to do with which assessment is appropriate. Virtual simulations, for… >>>

Advantages of Rubrics

I create addition task specific rubrics for my students. I beleive that providing a task specific rubric provides supplmental information for the student to complete the assginment. When I'm grading papers, it will refer a struggling student to the rubric I created for that specific assignment. It's a challenge sometimes to present the rubric and not induce the feeling of information overload for the student.