Clearly, criteria is a key issue when evaluating, thus we need to measure understanding in its different degrees in order to gather the required information on students’ learning results. To do so, we need to be “consistent and fair” (p. 172) but how? Identifying and clarifying “a set of independent variables in the performance” from the goals. According to this, rubrics can be very useful assessment tools thus they can provide specific information about students’ tasks insights and outcomes, but what should we really evaluate: correctness or understanding? Validity can give us a clue about this because it affects rubric design.
The answer seems to be assessing understanding by clearly setting criterion to reach effective, useful and needed evidence “to ferret out the reasons behind the answers and what meaning the learner makes of the results”.
Criteria for assessment through the use of rubrics can lead us to success in the difficult task to assess learning. Being clear at this point also tells students what they should know, understand and be able to do, and for sure helps teachers to decide whether their students have in fact achieved the learning intention answering the same question from the point of view of the student: How will I know if I've achieved the learning goal?
Hi Maka!
ReplyDeleteAs you said, it is important the use of rubrics to fairly assess our students and then get relevant information regarding the students’ performances. It is also important to present this tool of assessment to our students previously any sort of assessment in order to make them aware of what aspects will be relevant when evaluation has come. However, the criteria we should use must be crystal clear and must be a clear reflection of what we really want to assess, i.e., the purpose of the assessment.
Best
Angie
Certainly, rubrics make both teachers and students assessment easier, because they are explicit in terms of the clear criterion teachers are using and they provide immediate feedback to students' performance.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, when students are aware what they are expected to do before hand, they set high goals in order to reach the highest performance.
Another positive aspect to be considered is that they help students to co-assess and self-assess themselves their own learning projects.
Dear Macarena:
ReplyDeleteMeasuring understanding is a very complex task. Educational researchers have made real effort to find an objective way to measure it because objectivity plays a vital role in assessment. Rubrics seem to be the greatest discovery which might succeed in this objective. However, teachers have given them a misleading usage. Scoring results has become the essential product when using rubrics. What happens with students’ understanding of their results? Are scores really evidence of understanding? Getting two students the same mark in a test does it mean they perform the same? Are co- assessment and self- assessment used? Actually, these are questions which have to be answered before keeping on using rubrics with that objective.
Hi Maca!
ReplyDeleteHow to make a distinction between correctness and understanding, when tradition has always pointed to seek for correctness? It is like going against many beliefs and years of things done in the same way. There is a need to make a change and to achieve this it is absolutelly necessary for our instruments of assessment to be as consistent and fair as possible. As you mentioned it, one way is to get our students involved in the process and nost just see them as receptors of a bunch of contents. Sometimes we underestimate their capacities and their degree od committment with their learning process, so let' give them a chance and make them active participats of their own processes.
As you say there are three main stages involved in assessing the students ‘learning: the first one is to design an instrument which covers all the variables according to what is going to be assessed, in order to be consistent and fair. If we want to fulfill with these requirements we need to apply rubrics which are solid guidelines to get accurate results.
ReplyDeleteThe second one has to do with criteria which is the lecture of the obtained results, in which must be considered as the internal factors as the internal ones which affected or benefited learning process. Finally the third one refers to the use of this information in order to make the necessary adjustments to reinforce the weaknesses shown during the development of the task by the students.
I really liked this article...
ReplyDeleteIn the recent past I didn't know how to assess my students objectivly... 'this one espressed himself in English properly but the aim was not fully achieved... In fact he didn't even developed the idea of this x topic; whereas, this other student lacks proficiency but developed his argument very good... covering what I asked to do' Those were the kind of thoughts that poked my mind after evaluating some of my students unfairly... It's seems I also lack expertise when assessing... Anyway, I'm learning so i have to be gentle. And this chapter suggested the idea of using two or more rubrics while assessing; although it is going to be difficult to fix the criteria at the beginning, it will make me feel lot better after the evaluations knowing I was objective. So, the thing is what to evaluate and how... The compendium, what the syllabus says plus what I taught in class equals the aims the students should follow... It's a great idea that I'll take into practice very soon...
See you my dear.
Dear Macarena,
ReplyDeleteHow will I know if I've achieved the learning goal?
By reading this question the first idea that comes to my mind is how students would benefit from rubrics, yet we teachers are also benefited to a great extent from rubrics. On the one hand, rubrics represent a clear guideline for students to know exactly what the teacher wants them to do. On the other hand, rubrics help teachers to focus attention on the categories t be assessed and not irrelevant information.
Therefore, it is not How have students achieved the learning goal?, but how have we (students and teachers) achieved the learning goal?
Hi Macarena,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree when you say that rubrics can be very useful tools in assessing, but assessing what????? or what we should really evaluate?? as you asked before.
It seems to me that we are able to evaluate processes and not just outcomes which is the final result I suppose.
The thing is that we finally are evaluating learning whatever the meaning this word could have for us, it could be understanding or correcntess.
Daer Macarena,
ReplyDeleteRubrics are the solution to our difficulty in including subjective evaluation in our assessment process. Wiggins highly recommends analytic rubrics, but I personally believe that we always know what we want to evaluate. The problem is that we never put in in writing. The best way to do it by using a rubric. As anything we do, the more you practice with them the more skilled you get in creating your rubrics.