Checking and assessing learning with rubrics

When you create assessment or learning rubrics, you make it clear in your mind what acceptable work or excellent work looks like. This information is also helpful to your learners as they can see what they need to do to make the push for excellence. It can also be used for self-assessment or peer assessment.
A good starting point for creating your own rubrics is The University of Wisconsin's rubrics page. This site has example rubrics for the technology-led classroom: how to assess podcasts, mindmaps, eportfolios, blogs etc.
I have encouraged various organisations to use rubrics as part of their quality process to improve the learner's awareness of their own learning and to ensure the tutor is clear on his/her objectives. Ian Cooling of Sparsholt College (@iancooling) was inspired by this idea to create the following handout to use in class.

What's clever about his approach is that he clearly shows to the learner that what they think they know, and what they do know, are two different things. The handout is used while Ian plays a YouTube video in sections. Learners are shown some of the video and then tick to indicate their level of confidence in the topic. They then try to answer the question to prove what they know. This is where the learner is made aware of their misperception, if any, of their grasp of the knowledge or concepts.This awareness of learning is a powerful tool - one that we perhaps do not invoke often enough in our learners.


It's not the technology that is sophisticated in this example - it's the level of learning invoked by a simple handout, used with a video that could be accessed by learners in their own time. Almost all our technology-inspired teaching and learning could be improved further if we only make the learners aware of the process of learning. And that can be done simply with paper and pen :-)
Sammy of BLHairdressing Training is going to ask learners to add captions to YouTube videos - this is again an example of a learner 'proving' that they understand something. How Sammy can help these learners to feel confident that they are putting in quality captions or annotations to the videos, is to provide them with a rubric that clearly shows them how to reach excellence. When a learner has provided captions for the video, what does an excellent version look like?

Back to basics with marking rubrics

I had the opportunity to work with the Sparsholt College ILT team on Nov 29 on behalf of the JISC RSC SE. They are also involved in the #jtdambassadors project, a joint project between the JISC RSC SE and JISC TechDis.

For the #jtdambassadors project, they have started taking videos of the students in the kitchens as evidence, and Mary's going to look at the easi-speak microphones for the learners to use. They will play back the videos for the learners so they can record their own description as a voiceover. We felt the 'offline' method was better as the learners could take their time recording their voices on to the easi-speak mic rather than feeling pressurised recording a soundtrack over the video. These can then be edited together using Movie Maker.

Sparsholt have a committed ILT team but elearning practice is still not as wide-spread as they would like. Our mission over the two days of training (the other day takes place 6 Dec) was to explore ways of breaking down the barriers to enable good practice to be embedded across the college.

The first barrier is the very significant IPD. (For those who don't know, IPD stands for Innovation Prevention Department.) Without a can-do person helping you with technicalities, organisations are really handicapped in their elearning developments. What ideas do you have for getting on with or around this department?

Despite this barrier, the team have managed to implement quite a few technologies. I saw some really good practice in the use of Mahara, and their vShare work is great. vShare is a video sharing site that they have installed on a College server and allows them to have their own version of YouTube. This means they can upload all the student work for assessments without it being in the Cloud. An example of some really good practice that they are developing is this: they are going to use last year's students' videos for this year's resources. So where the students used the videos last year to demonstrate their understanding of horse conformation, this year, they will use the videos to look at the retail value of the horses. It's a good way to recycle the student-created resources.

This led me to discuss assessment rubrics with them. It's amazing how a simple pedagogical tool like this can really augment what you are doing in elearning. We looked at some examples and discussed the students creating a rubric for peer-assessing each other's work. We also talked about providing the students with the marking rubric for a project as this will show them how they will be assessed by the tutor and allow them to understand how to achieve better quality work.

There are lots of resources on the web for rubric templates and how to create rubrics for assessment. Here's one resource that I'm going to explore further that gives lots of rubric-development resources for technology-enhanced lessons from edtechteacher.org. On this page, there are resources on how to assess student contributions on Voicethread! (Voicethread has been a thread in my previous blogs.)

Sparsholt are also using SkyDrive significantly and finding it extremely helpful in sharing resources and for assignments. The IPD has been very helpful in getting this set up for the students. The only down side is that the teachers don't have accounts set up and have to create their own hotmail accounts to use it. It's not the first time I've heard of this practice and it really puzzles me - why would you set things up in such a way that didn't help the teachers to work with the students? It would be like creating classrooms where there is no space for the teacher to teach in.

Much of the day was spent looking at how you could work at the higher end of Bloom's taxonomy with simple tools like textwall and also the concept of moving people from the bottom to the top in a scaffolded way to help them. This may help the team to redesign their training so that those who are not so engaged with them can find a way to get on the first rung.

I shared with them the use of Voicethread to augment what they were already doing in video. We used ipadio to record some reflections and again, this was something they were very keen to adopt.

With both textwall and ipadio, they could easily embed these in their vle, allowing updates on the fly. They were keen on the ipadio app as it would allow the land-based curriculum tutors to easily make recordings outside of wifi range, then upload these when they were back in College buildings. They could also ring up with a basic phone and make a podcast recording that way.

In terms of gadgets, we looked at the Easi-speak microphone that I discovered at Treloars, and the ipevo camera that I had brought along. It's basically a usb 'webcam' with a stand and therefore lends itself to working like a direct projector. You can put all kinds of gadgets or even paper under it to project on the screen via the computer.

So what can i share with them next week that will help them to bring more staff on board with elearning? Clearly just having the tools available isn't enough to change the practice of a lot of the tutors. From my own experience, these are some ideas that may help:
1. They have just purchased a range of mobile technologies and where other technologies have not piqued the professional interest of their colleagues, these may interest some people. Same with textwall and the use of sms for learning. You just never know what technologies may trigger an idea in someone's head so having a range of tools and allowing people to adopt the one that interests them will start them on the first step of the journey.
2. Get the tutors who are doing good work to share their practice during staff development sessions - better yet if you have people who were hesitant adopters. Not all ILT practice has to be all-singing and all-dancing. The good use of a simple tool can make a great impact. The advantage is that the simple tool won't be difficult to learn either.
3. Implement a student mentor scheme where identified students have the role of helping the teacher with technologies in the classroom.
4. Use oblique methods like introducing rubrics for assessment. When it's clear to see how you might 'mark' a student's participation in a discussion forum, it doesn't seem as daunting to implement it as an activity.
5. Work on the mindsets of people. The fear of no longer being the sage on the stage can prevent people from changing their teaching practice. They stick to the transmission mode because that's where they think they have the advantage. We have to work on their mindset first and for that, I would refer you to Carol Dweck's book on Mindset.
6. Reduce the fear factor by letting people bring some technologies home with them to play with. Once they get over the fear of pressing the wrong button, it can really help to move them on.
7. Work on one person at a time. An individualised learning plan can do wonders for staff development. Starting some people off with learning to use Word or PowerPoint more efficiently (I recommend the JISC TechDis Toolbox!) or for greater accessibility can build up confidence in technology and provide a route into learning more.
8. A pincer approach from all angles so that the managers and students are involved in the picture. Build in a change of mindset as part of the person's goals for the year. Note it's not about the technology, it's about the pedagogy and the professional practice of the teacher. If the teacher has not developed his or her practice in any way at all through the year, shouldn't we be looking at this? Develop the reflective practitioner through the organisational culture. Educate the students on what makes a good lesson so that their feedback on their lessons isn't based on their low expectations from the past. Get them to design a lesson feedback rubric!

Yes, we're gong rubric-mad at Sparsholt and I think it's a good thing. I hope to find out from them in months to come how this idea has taken hold and hopefully helped them to progress their ILT strategy.