Rubrics, PBL and WebQuest

Reflections on Week 5

Only 2 days and we reach the mid-point of this 10 week Webskills program. Whoever said: "Time flies" , really knew what he was talking about. This week is special in that it is productive and time consuming. We have been introduced to WebQuest which is novel to me. Thus, I took most of the time going through different articles, websites and videos to have a clear idea of its merits and demerits. I am planning to write my reflections of this week in three parts:

Part One

I would like to share the following comments about alternative assessments and rubrics with you. I have read the article entitled: “Assessing Learning: Alternative Assessment” that was assigned to us. It is a useful article that focuses on the methods of assessment in learner-centered classrooms where the learners reflect on their own learning process. Checklists and rubrics are the tools of alternative assessment. These two tools are not new to me. 

I have been using checklists since 1988. I have been using them for only two purposes. The first one is to evaluate my students’ performance in their teaching practice at schools. I have adapted a checklist that contains 5 main dimensions, namely: Personality, Language proficiency, Lesson preparation, Instruction, and Class management. Each dimension contains between 2 and 10 items. When observing my students teaching, I have just to make a tick in the appropriate column that represents the student’s  score in an item. The total marks of the five dimensions are calculated and that is the student’s score in practicing teaching at schools. I also use such checklists for evaluating Micro- teaching. I use checklists to evaluate the undergraduate students’ research papers. It consists of 23 dimensions. For example, six marks out of 100 are assigned to the category References. Then, we make a tick or  “X” for the following items: Accurate presentation, consistent style, adequate, match literature review, relevant, and recent. Then, we count the scores of all the dimensions and that is the student’s marks in Educational Research.

In 2007, I was introduced to Rubrics for the first time at the University of Sohar in the Sultanate of Oman. I was a visiting lecturer (2007-2012) and I was teaching Advanced Writing to the students of English Education. I had to use a rubric for evaluating my students’ performance in the Advanced Writing course. A one day workshop training was provided to us at that time providing us with examples and benchmarks (standards) against which a student’s performance is judged. In 2011, I attended a 3 day conference organized by the British Council in India and presented a paper. The theme of the conference was “Assessment” and most of the presenters advocated the use of rubrics in assessing language skills.

Therefore, I created a rubric for evaluating my M.Ed. students’ Oral Presentation as part of the requirements of the Theories of Language Learning course. The URL of the rubric is: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-BuYg9zyxUESWJmbHZwTHRXdkU/edit?usp=drive_web

I posted that rubric in the Webskills Wiki and in the Blog that I have just created for my course of Theories of Language Learning so that my students can see the items against which their own oral presentations will be assessed. I created this rubric based on the several  rubrics that I have in my personal library and by viewing many rubrics for evaluating many topics. I am planning to use this rubric to evaluate the oral presentation of my M. Ed. students in the Theories of Language Learning course. As part of the requirements of this course the students are assigned topics related to the Theories of Language Learning. The following are the topics assigned to the students this semester:

1   The Role of L1 Interference.

2      The Acquisition Learning Hypothesis

3      The Monitor Hypothesis

4      The Monitor Hypothesis

5      The Natural Order Hypothesis

6      The Input Hypothesis

7      The Critical Period Hypothesis

8      Personality Factors

9      Motivation, Aptitude, and Attitude

1     Language Learning Strategies and Learning Styles

Each student is assigned one topic. S/He has to prepare a 3000 word assignment and to make a 30 minute oral presentation of the same topic. At the end 3-4 minutes are given for the other students to ask the presenter questions on the topic of the presentation and the presenter has to address such questions. The maximum marks of the presentation is 5 marks. I added the last column of the rubric to allow me to put the student’s marks in each category out of 4.  The total marks of the rubric is 5 * 4 = 20. Then I will divide the mark over 4 in order to get the student’s mark out of 5.

The article that I read categorizes rubrics into 4 types, namely: Holistic rubrics, Analytic rubrics, Primary Trait rubrics and Multi-Trait rubrics. It might be worth mentioning that the rubric that I created is of the Analytic type. It consists of 5 dimensions for evaluating my students’ oral presentations. These dimensions are Presentation and Preparedness, Content, Originality, Vocabulary and Answer Questions. Each dimension is scored separately out of 4 marks.  Then, the  overall marks are calculated by adding the marks of the 5 dimensions.

One advantage of this type of rubrics is that the instructor can modify the marks of each dimension if s/he feels that one dimension is more important than another. For example in my rubric, “Content” may be assigned 5 marks while “Vocabulary” may be assigned 3 marks instead of assigning 4 to the 2 categories. However, Analytic rubrics are criticized for not giving the teacher or the student a good picture of the whole performance. They give separate scores for different dimensions of a student’s oral presentation skills. In short, rubrics are good tools for judging a student’s performance based on established criteria .

To Be Continued