Requests from Participants

I would like help with developing a debate (in classroom) project as on oral component in a C-I course.

I could use some help setting up peer review of formal group oral presentations. A peer review worksheet, for example, or a way to coordinate having groups meet outside class.

I would like to have some type of workshop or session for our department to become familiar with the CxC and what is offered through the Communication Studios.

Classroom Feedback and Grading Discussion at S-I

Assessment:

• early responses and intervention more effective than comments at the end of course; formative feedback (e.g.: proposals); may or may not include a grade. (it's either there or it's not there is one approach). includes a lot of written feedback.
• "subjective" judgment and grading; specify criteria and standards in syllabus or assingment sheet; apply the standards to drafts for intermediate feedback and then to the final product. Questions about fairness when some put more effort into projects than others--often, specifying the standards and criteria can eliminate the perception of "subjective" grading.
  

Good Techniques:

• having the first draft read out loud by the student to the instructor at conferences or to other students (they can hear logic, style, mechanic, flow issues), peer-to-peer reviews can also work for larger groups.
• stage the feedback: content and idea-based feedback so that there is enough involved in their next draft to make mechanical/flow suggestions later. "Student sentences must grow rank before they can be pruned,"--Postman?
  
• give peers a criteria sheet that is collected by the instructor
• ask outside faculty/professionals to help evaluate projects.
• create surveys at the end of the semester. surveymonkey.com free service
• ITS created a survey tool you can access through your PAWS account to create a survey.
• outlines to review big picture, followed by a visual diagram of the essay that shows the layout of the essay.
• periodic evaluation as opposed to a final evaluation leads to better projects
• samples of well-executed projects distributed to the students helps them to model their own work.
• provide criteria for poor execution as well as for excellent execution. mark up student projects and cross-reference them back to the describe criterion.

Issues:

• have to give up some content to focus on the feedback, but it might be worth it. active learning allows students to actually retain more. Many believe that the students actually end up learning more content this way.

Requests:

• how do we construct peer-group-review assignments outside of class.

Thanks to Colleen Fava for taking notes during this discussion at the 2008 Summer Institute.

Personal Stakes in Assessment; Issues, Requests

From '08 Summer Institute:


Personal Stakes:

• team 1: departments do not communicate well among themselves. no consensus. no agreement about basic assumptions about dept subject matter, let alone communication requirements. departments have not invested in assessing communication skills within the departments.
• team 3: faculty agree that communication assessment needs to be happening, but who is going to take responsibility for it.
• team 7 (engineering): meet abet standards. this is at the course level/as well as the departmental level, so faculty are staked in the process. requirements are specific to each college and to each department.
• team 6: assistant profs are more focused at the classroom level. associate profs start working at the department level. stakes change depending on level. a&d accredidation does include communication elements.
• team 4: accredidation at the college level vs. the university level changes the stakes for the faculty.
• team 2: how do you grade students fairly? int'l studies relatively new (9yrs old); had to invent a matrix--5 skills/knowledge-types, all content, no process. criteria in the intro and exit courses.

Issues:

• authentic assessment. student and faculty buy-in.
• if students are not graded on their final "tests" of knowledge(exit exams), how do you get them to take it seriously?
• a&d needs more buy-in for cxc, but also needs more emphasis college-wide involving writing.
• matrices need to more discipline-specific matrices. vague vs. tight: students need structure, but they also need room to experiment. how do you balance?
• departments/colleges have nuances that make consistent matrices difficult.
• balance student effort vs. actual quality of product (this is a place where iterations, revisions can really take effort into account, because they have a chance to incorporate feedback).

Requests:

• speak to our departments about instituting agreed upon assessment criterion (a&s)
• cooperative learning communities across disciplines with communication "experts" (a&d)

Action items:

• Look at assessment matrices for each department. Share with other faculty members participating in SI. Sign into your paws account; planning resources --> choose department and degree program.

Responding & Assessing at 2008 Summer Institute

On the left is the cover sheet for the materials on Responding, Assessing, & Grading at the 2008 CxC Faculty Summer Institute. Feel free to add your comments and suggestions on any of these topics to this post.