We have been writing about an idea for a new approach to assessment of student work taking place in Web 2.0 environments. Gary Brown coined the term Harvesting Gradebook to describe this idea.
You are invited to try the Harvesting Gradebook as a member of the world community. This time-sensitive opportunity is part of a Washington State University course happening during Spring 2009.
Please understand that you are working with real students and an instructor in an actual running course. We appreciate your thoughtful and sensitive feedback. This blog also welcomes your meta-comments on the idea and the experience.
PROCESS
The instructor’s blog contains the assignment a series of posts which serve as the assignment prompt beginning here and adding some style guides and then some clarifications about the blog content and the assessment criteria and then a topic list. The balance of the instructor’s blog are personal reflections and modeling of activities in the assignment.
The instructor’s blog roll provides a link to the student blogs. In them you will see multiple posts by students, inviting traditional blog comments, and (in many cases) with an invitation to a “survey” that will look something like this:
Please evaluate this post:
http://skylight.wsu.edu/s/xxxxx.srv
You can preview the survey (opens in new window) (don’t post review data here, this is a just a preview ). Previewing is worth while because you will be asked to reflect on the assignment prompt, the student work and the value of the rubric itself. This 360-degree review is a reason we are calling this a transformative assessment approach.
Understand this is a work in progress, we are revising based on feedback and our own reflection. Also, understand that we are attempting to model the process by which this kind of process is evolved by the community using it, so your feedback to us (comment or trackback) is valuable. Please give us meta-comments on the process that are not appropriate for the feedback form itself.
If this experience whets your appetite to learn more about our thinking, a collection of materials can be found in a round table we prepared for AAC&U in January .
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March 27, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Nils Peterson
Submitted my email:
I have checked it out, and it’s pretty intriguing. Here’s how it looks to me after about fifteen minutes of reading, without yet participating.
- Rich built blogging into his course assignments, and told his students this was out there for the public to read and review
- with the rest of Earth, I’m invited to read his criteria (over about three entries), then read the student work, then follow the “survey” links to scoring rubrics
At that point, by comparing the students’ responses to Rich’s published standards, I can grade their work on-line. Is that about right? I wanted to make sure I was following it before I started clicking on rubrics. So that’s my first question — do I have the right idea about this?
Second question has to do with this part of the January post quoting Gary: “The Harvesting Gradebook collects copies of the assessments for the gradebook, but leaves the student work in situ.” So, as I click on these rubrics I’m sending my judgments to two places, right? To the student, unmediated, and to Rich, for the gradebook collection of assessments. Decades from now the blog I reacted to may be gone (since the Harvesting Gradebook never made a copy), but my evaluation of it may still be attached to the course records. Does that part sound right?
I feel like your office is in the 2050s. Thanks for inviting me, Doc Brown.
Ken
March 27, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Nils Peterson
Ken,
You summarize the experience we are offering, and ask: “I can grade their work on-line. Is that about right?”
I’d prefer you used the term ‘assess’, or ’score with the rubric’. The creation of the student’s “grade” as ultimately recorded by the registrar is a process that will benefit from your scoring, but will be mediated by Rich King.
You ask where your responses are being sent. Its not two places, it is one place, our Skylight Matrix Survey system. You are correct that all your judgments go to the student, unmediated. This includes your judgments about the utility of the rubric. The effect is to include the learner in the dialog about the yardstick being used to measure the learning. Peers are using this same instrument to give peer feedback so they are also joining the conversation by answering the questions about the utility of the rubric.
As things stand, Rich will get a richer report of the data, just because we can do that for the instructor role. The report will help understand how different parts of the community are commenting differently, see for example our analysis of the feedback last semester for ideas.
As a post-hoc analysis we will also be be able to give Rich information like this from last semester, showing how different groups raters agree or differ.
Thanks for asking good clarifying questions.
March 29, 2009 at 8:54 pm
One small step for man » Blog Archive » Extending the Ripple Effect
[...] The DecSc 470 process produced artifacts that were used to credential students in that course. Last year’s Engineers without Borders produced an electronic portfolio that could been a credentialing tool. DecSc 470 worked in a threaded discussion inside a course space. Now we might advocate the course use blogs (to recruit help a la ThinkCycle), and with that more public process, we could easily add a Harvesting Gradebook. [...]
April 23, 2009 at 12:26 pm
David Eubanks
Backtrack: http://highered.blogspot.com/2009/04/rules-damned-rules-and-policy.html
April 24, 2009 at 10:53 pm
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