Castillo Assessment

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How Students were assessed on feedback.

As students were giving each other and receiving feedback they needed to improve their work, a means to determine how well their work measured up was needed. It is important for us as teachers to explain and make clear what the expectations are for the project or assignment are. In this section we will look at a simple rubric for assessing their and results of the surveys students took at the end of some projects.

Rubrics

Rubrics are super helpful in helping students understand the assignment, but it also helps peers and guests give clearer feedback as well.

There are several types of rubrics you can use. Here I show an example of a non-traditional single column rubric. This type of rubric helps students to not focus so much on their grade, but how they can actually improve their work. Edutopia has a great article about single column rubrics which you can find here.

Here a few of the great reasons from the article you should try it out!

A single-point rubric outlines the standards a student has to meet to complete the assignment; however, it leaves the categories outlining success or shortcoming open-ended. This relatively new approach creates a host of advantages for teachers and students. Implementing new ideas in our curricula is never easy, but allow me to suggest six reasons why you should give the single-point rubric a try.

1. It gives space to reflect on both strengths and weaknesses in student work. Each category invites teachers to meaningfully share with students what they did really well and where they might want to consider making some adjustments.

2. It doesn’t place boundaries on student performance. The single-point rubric doesn’t try to cover all the aspects of a project that could go well or poorly. It gives guidance and then allows students to approach the project in creative and unique ways. It helps steer students away from relying too much on teacher direction and encourages them to create their own ideas.

3. It works against students’ tendency to rank themselves and to compare themselves to or compete with one another. Each student receives unique feedback that is specific to them and their work, but that can’t be easily quantified.

4. It helps take student attention off the grade. The design of this rubric emphasizes descriptive, individualized feedback over the grade. Instead of focusing on teacher instruction in order to aim for a particular grade, students can immerse themselves in the experience of the assignment.

5. It creates more flexibility without sacrificing clarity. Students are still given clear explanations for the grades they earned, but there is much more room to account for a student taking a project in a direction that a holistic or analytic rubric didn’t or couldn’t account for.

6. It’s simple! The single-point rubric has much less text than other rubric styles. The odds that our students will actually read the whole rubric, reflect on given feedback, and remember both are much higher.

For their short film and other video projects I decided to go with a more traditional holistic rubric with each section corresponding to number. This can translate easier to a grade point.

Findings from my own research

These are the results of the survey the students participated in after the first round of research. While responses to their blogs in regards to their work was recorded digitally and could be accessed at any time - the students preferred the traditional means of oral feedback since it was instant. Figures 1, 2, and 3 detail the data that was collected.

Figure 1. Students were asked if the open air feedback they were given was found to be helpful in how they can improve their work.

Figure 2. Students were asked if the feedback that was posted on their school blogs by their peers was found to be helpful in how they can improve their work.

Figure 3. Students were asked which type of feedback they preferred overall.

The second round of research took place during final projects where students were tasked with showing their understanding of basic storytelling, cinematography and video editing. Taking the results of the first round of research to determine if taking the immediate response of verbal feedback and recording it, coupled with related screenshots would yield a different response from students. This step was built into the assignment to provide an opportunity for students to make changes. Students were taught how to use Adobe Spark to create micro presentations of their feedback to share back with their peers. Figures 5 and 6 are their responses.

Figure 4. After students created mini feedback presentations, most preferred seeing the visual and hearing the thoughts of their peers.

Figure 5. 1(most helpful) to 5 (least helpful). Students found the combination of visual and audio for the feedback received to be mostly helpful in improving their work.

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