One of my concerns regarding assessment is directly related to Problem Based Learning. When a course is all structured in PBL, students have many activities and sometimes there are multiple projects going on at the same time. On that notice, creating rubrics, providing feedback, assessing students and grading might become a nightmare. In fact, that is something I have been struggling with on the classes I am teaching. Since they have many projects with different levels of complexity, I also have to provide feedback and grade them.
These are the strategies I have created so far:
At the beginning of projects I ask students to not only explore the topic of their projects, but also to find an article on the same topic, read it and summarize it making connections between their ideas and the scholarly piece of writing. That way I can keep track of what everyone is about to work on and maybe interfere here and there making suggestions.
In order to provide formative feedback on the ongoing projects, I created "networking days". On those days students either present their projects to the whole class or in small groups and they receive feedback on their projects. That allows me not only to provide students with formative feedback during
class time, but it also allows other students to see different ideas and
maybe have new insights on their own projects.
Finally, the most challenging for me is to grade and provide summative assessment. At that stage all the activity relies exclusively on me and, as any other graduate student who also happens to be a teaching assistant, I am always very busy. Thus, I am still struggling to create a strategy or a model of rubric that allows me to grade faster, as well as provide a rationale for students' grades. If anyone has a suggestion on that and would like to share with me I would appreciate it. For now, I am slowly grading my students' projects and I am struggling to keep all up to date. My plan, however, is to let them know about their grades for all the activities so far during midterm week since we do not have a specific activity for a midterm grade.
If you have not done so, I would look at other professor's project rubrics and borrow from them. You could then use those as a starting point and adjust to your needs. Also, whatever the objectives for your course are, I would put those in your rubric so you can justify your grading. I don't think there is a way to easily grade a project. It always takes me forever to grade mine. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteHave you considered having students create their own rubrics for their projects? It would require a little scaffolding at first, but since you are working with pre-service teachers it would be a valuable learning experience for them. They could then assess their own work against their created rubric. This would keep you from having to create from scratch a tailored rubric for each individual project, but then you could give feedback based on this phase of the project. The basic work is done by your students and then you are elaborating on the feedback they are beginning to create.
ReplyDeleteLucas,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading about some of your requirements for projects. Really love the part of researching their topic through article databases. That is such a great way tie researching effectively into your project. I also think your use of student feedback is important. While I have younger students than you, I have found that my students buy into peer feedback easier than teacher feedback.
For your last question I would agree with the comments above. A professor told me long ago "A good teacher is a good thief!" Reinventing the wheel is not always necessary, especially if you take it from an excellent teacher/professor!
Great thoughts!
Jack