[Portfolio] [Management] A manifesto for Grading and Rating in Sakai
Josh Baron
Josh.Baron at marist.edu
Thu Oct 22 16:40:54 PDT 2009
David,
I've not had time to reply to the larger "manifesto" but wanted to comment
briefly on your idea of tracking.
I think it would be a very valuable component in the larger assessment
process. Taking this a step further, there are some key metrics that
research has started to show are indicators of students becoming at risk
for failing a course, this is particularly true in online courses. For
example, it is not uncommon for a student in an online course to complete
the first week or so of work but then begin to "fad" out and disappear
from active participation in the course. It would very powerful if Sakai
could be monitoring these metrics (e.g. number of visits, postings, etc.)
and alert instructors or others that the student may need some outreach.
This might be another use of the type of tracking you're discussing.
I would put forth one inherent risk that I've seen in using this type of
data. Just looking at these numbers does not always reflect the reality
of what is happening in the learning process. For example, we have had
situations in which a faculty member has noted that one of his online
students only signs in to his site twice per week for 10 minutes each
time...the instructor concluded that the student could not possibly be
reading all of the weekly materials and that he must be cheating as he was
doing well. As it turned out, the student preferred to print out all of
the materials each week and read them offline. My point is that if we
give instructors tools that allow them to automatically incorporate
tracking data into their grading process there may be unintended
implications that need to be considered.
Josh
-----------------------------
Joshua Baron
Director, Academic Technology and eLearning
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, New York 12601
(845) 575-3623 (work)
Twitter: JoshBaron
From:
David Goodrum <davidgoodrum at rocketmail.com>
To:
Sean Keesler <sean.keesler at threecanoes.com>, Noah Botimer
<botimer at umich.edu>
Cc:
management at collab.sakaiproject.org, portfolio at collab.sakaiproject.org,
"pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.orgLearning"
<pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org>
Date:
10/22/2009 06:27 PM
Subject:
Re: [Portfolio] [Management] A manifesto for Grading and Rating in Sakai
Sent by:
portfolio-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org
Hi everyone (sorry for the repost to the management list),
I really like what John has done here in pulling together several themes
around feedback, such as rating and grading; and I appreciate the issues
that Mark, Noah, Ken and Sean have raised in other replies.
With this narrative approach John has done a nice job of greatly extending
and weaving together more telegraphic comments made elsewhere by myself
and others (see http://tinyurl.com/yzzh2kc -- recently put up in a Google
doc by Clay) about how any Sakai 3 object (or placeholder for an external
object) or collections of such things (e.g., a portfolio) could receive
rich-text comment, a grade, or structured (e.g., rubric) or un-structured
feedback; feedback could come from the instructor, or from peers, from
oneself (e.g., reflection), or from a reviewer outside of the class or
even outside of the institution; and in a particular learning
space/environment various kinds of data can get congregated (unlike the
current Gradebook tool that is either all points or all percentages) so
that, for example, attendance might be a checkmark, a collection of
quizzes might be points, papers with a letter grade, a project or
portfolio with a rubric, and so on.
Briefly, I’d like to add another related theme of tracking. At a prior
time in response to some of the limitations of the single Gradebook
approach with a single grade type, some of us at IU conceptualized a
Tracking feature/tool which would have the general purpose of providing
instructors an easy-to-manage method of tracking low-stakes, but
high-in-quantity activities for such items as class participation, session
attendance, or daily micro-assessments (where the instructor is basically
checking off that something was accomplished). The summary of an item
could be linked to/recorded in the Gradebook. Extending the notion, one
might want to extract a site stat and turn that into a tracked item (e.g.,
the number of posts by an individual per week.)
I’m not sure that explains it well, but am merely trying to suggest that
tracking might be another feedback related activity in addition to rating
and grading.
Regards - David
From: Sean Keesler <sean.keesler at threecanoes.com>
To: Noah Botimer <botimer at umich.edu>
Cc: management at collab.sakaiproject.org; portfolio at collab.sakaiproject.org;
"pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org Learning"
<pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org>
Sent: Tue, October 20, 2009 10:01:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Portfolio] [Management] A manifesto for Grading and Rating
in Sakai
One of the things that are crucial to making meaning out of the
assessment process (and the grades/ratings that are the record of that
process) are sets of rubrics that document HOW rating/grading should
be done or has been done.
How you do or DO NOT manage and/or mandate the application of rubrics
to the assessment of student work is a local decision that may vary
within and amongst faculty members, departments to entire colleges
with the university, but the capability to author, share, modify and
find rubrics suitable for a any one application would seem to me to be
a missing piece of John's manifesto and one that would make the idea
of assessment a core piece of Sakai 3.
It has a lot of impact on the deployment of ePortfolios where multiple
faculty (perhaps from different departments or colleges) could be
asked to blindly assess a collection of student work through their
lens of specialization. Providing guidance for these faculty to HOW to
grade a portfolio gives the entire process more validity.
Rubrics are also a vehicle for a university to articulate how it
differentiates it's standards for excellence from other colleges or
for showing that program X complies with Association Y's expectations.
A while ago I jotted down some different ways that rubrics might be
managed in an LMS. I believe that issues like the Spellings
Commission Report and the No Child Left Behind fiasco (K12) and so
they may be receiving more attention here than elsewhere. It may be
interesting to see what patterns exist in the community around the
application and use of rubrics.
1. Managed assessments:
Some rubrics are rather specific to (and must be tied to) a particular
assessment item and must be approved by an "assessment coordinator"
for educational QA purposes as part of a larger assessment system
strategy. Changing the assessment/rubric in this case involves more
than just the teacher.
2. Generally reusable (but unchangeable) rubrics
Some rubrics may be general purpose rubrics that are NOT tied to an
assessment, but the dissemination of these approved rubrics may be a
strategy of an institution to push forward an agenda of best practice
for assessment by providing a handy reference library of general
purpose writing, mathematics and science rubrics (for example). While
the choice whether or not to use one of these "off the shelf" rubrics
(and which one) is left to the teacher, providing some information to
the teacher about the schools expectations of its students at
different stages (and perhaps suggesting an appropriate rubric for
this grade level/stage of development) would make this service more
valuable.
3. Reusable rubric templates:
Similar to the above, but the library of "off the shelf" rubrics are
merely starting points. There is not a priority to ensure that
everyone is doing assessment the exact same way. When a teacher uses
one of these rubrics, they can easily edit the performance indicators
to suit their needs and create a new rubric, just for their new
assignment. (Rubristar approach)
4. Sharing of rubrics:
This is a bottom up approach to establishing "best practice". As the
teachers create their own rubrics against goals, they have the
opportunity to publish them as part of the "reusable" library so other
teachers can use/edit/republish them. (Someone?)
Sean Keesler
130 Academy Street
Manlius, New York 13104 USA
315-663-7756
sean.keesler at threecanoes.com
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Noah Botimer <botimer at umich.edu> wrote:
> Hello John,
> Thank you for the rather comprehensive narrative. I believe that these
are
> important for the archives as we change our ideas and software over
time.
> They leave a better historical record of our state of mind at any given
> point than a pile of JIRA tickets. Our successive approximation is
better
> validated when we have a record of these richer "data" points.
> Now, more on task...
> This is a fair account from my perspective, and is especially important
in
> that it carves out a first-class place for two things that have been
> historical weaknesses:
> 1. The ability to treat various artifacts individually and in
collections,
> consistently, across types of "stuff" and activity (e.g., reflection vs.
> feedback vs. grading)
> 2. The ability to retrieve meaningful performance (or other) data in
detail
> and aggregate, consistently, and without extensive one-off programming
>
> Interestingly enough, these two areas are what I've spent four years
working
> on -- so I suppose it's not surprising that I call them out. I mention
them
> as weaknesses from my experience. It has been difficult to combine
> assignment information with student-crafted presentation. It has been
> difficult to combine course-based (assignment, quiz, etc.) data and
> program-based activity (annual review, capstone, student teaching
> performance) and map them to curricular goals and reports...
> Please do not take my comments as complaints of where we are. What is
more
> important is that I see this narrative as recognizing these activities
not,
> as we have, as things that can be bolted on post-construction but,
rather,
> as shaping the core provisions of a meaningful academic and
collaborative
> platform. We are, as a community, much more aware of our successes and
> shortfalls. This, I feel, is very healthy and inspiring.
> I believe this discussion is going in the right direction and sincerely
hope
> that we can find the energy to support it.
> Thanks,
> -Noah
> On Oct 16, 2009, at 6:02 AM, John Norman wrote:
>
> I have collected my thoughts around grading and rating in Sakai. I offer
> them now partly because I feel ready, partly because there are open
> questions about Gradebook in Sakai 3 and partly because we have just had
a
> discussion in which I suggest it is hard to break things out of a
coherent
> Sakai 3 project. If accepted as is, this represents a logical area of
> activity than can readily be envisioned as a standalone activity - maybe
> even a separate product.
> First of all I'd like to suggest that grading is a subset of a general
> rating and feedback activity. Many artifacts can be rated, from
instructor
> performance during a course (course evaluation), through quality of a
> teaching asset or exercise (rating) to assessing the quality of a
student
> portfolio (feedback) and assessing the performance of a student on an
> assignment or test (grading). The common pattern is: an artifact is
produced
> by one individual (or group) and some value judgement is recorded by one
or
> more other people.
> The process by which an artifact is judged can be simple or complex.
Complex
> processes include multi-stage workflows where raw scores are obtained by
one
> process and raw scores moderated to a final grade by another process. I
see
> plagiarism detection as one particular wrinkle in such a workflow.
> I suggest that (nearly) everything in Sakai should be ratable/gradable.
I
> will refer to the ratable/gradable elements as "artifacts" to indicate
that
> they may not be 'technical elements' but some aggregation of technical
> elements that makes sense for rating/grading purposes. Moreover, we
should
> not forget that some of the artifacts that are rated/graded may not be
> electronic and the 'artifact' may be a proxy for some real world
activity or
> output that cannot be captured electronically.
> The activity of rating/grading is essentially a human judgement. Tests
and
> quizzes represent a subset of this situation where the human codifies
their
> judgement into rules applied by the testing engine and the test engine
> automates the application of scores. The Quiz with the student answers
> represents the artifact and the raw scores and/or processed grade
represents
> the judgement. The people involved in rating/grading can be anyone:
> students, teachers, peers.
> The artifact to be rated or graded may not be stable over time, in which
> case a 'snapshot' of some kind is desirable for audit purposes. An
example
> might be the state of my personal portfolio pages on the first day of
May,
> when they are declared to be assessed. I may wish to continue
maintaining
> the pages after the assessment, but their status at the time of
assessing is
> worth recording. A different example might be my performance in a piece
of
> drama. I have no idea how this would be recorded in the real world, but
I
> imagine that the grader might write down some critique/commentary and
then
> assign a grade. The critique/commentary would become the recorded
artifact
> (in some places there might be a video recording but I don't assume
that)
> and separately there would be a grade/score/rating. Teacher performance
in
> class evaluated by students is not far from this model. The questions in
the
> evaluation form might be considered the rubric for the teachers
performance.
> In this world, we would want a flexible reporting platform that allows
grade
> information (including an archive of artifact snapshots) to be collected
and
> analysed (and sometimes further processed). I suggest we think of using
> something like BIRT to create this flexible reporting environment and
then
> consider certain predefined views of the data and derived reports from
the
> data as the essence of "GradeBook" functionality. i.e. "GradeBook" is a
> subset of functionality from a powerful reporting environment.
Ultimately
> "the official record" will need to be updated.
> I think it is really important to anticipate that some of the artifacts
to
> be graded may come from outside Sakai and Sakai needs to be able to
accept
> artifacts for grading and also to accept graded artifacts for inclusion
in
> reporting. I see two main implementation options for Sakai
> 1. A Sakai service with published external entry points (Moodle/Mahara
> integration would be an example)
> 2. A new Sakai 'product' which would be an institutional grading/rating
> service that receives artifacts from a number of places (including the
Sakai
> Course Management System) and manages the grading/rating workflow into a
> flexible reporting system that creates a complete record for an
individual
> and allows this information to be displayed in a number of places
(including
> Sakai CMS)
> A strong attraction of the second model is that it fits with the idea
that
> assessing performance is a core competence of the institution that
preceded
> and will survive the CMS, but which is unlikely to be developed for us
by
> the commercial world. It could also represent a shared service with a
> student information system.
> Having set out my manifesto, it is interesting to consider what the
product
> council might do with it. From my personal perspective it would be great
if
> we adopted it as the Sakai manifesto (following review/revision) and
called
> for developments to align with it, but there is an open question
regarding
> the value of 'adoption' of the manifesto if nobody is interested in
> developing products/code that address the manifesto.
> John
> PS I have forwarded this message that I saw as I came in this morning
> because in my mind it illustrates an early step in the direction of my
> manifesto, although I have taken it much further (perhaps
unrecognisably).
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: David Horwitz <david.horwitz at uct.ac.za>
> Date: 16 October 2009 09:29:58 BST
> To: sakai-dev <sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org>,
> production at collab.sakaiproject.org,
announcements at collab.sakaiproject.org
> Subject: [Announcements] 2.7 Framework: commons and edu-servise
1.0.0-beta01
> released
> Hi All,
>
> We're proud to announce the first of 2 framework releases in support of
the
> upcoming 2.7 release. The creation of these bundles aims to rationalize
our
> dependency tree and enable a more modular approach to Sakai releases.
>
> Commons 1.0.0-beta01
> The commons package contains common services depended on by a number of
> Sakai tools, but outside the scope of the Kernel. The services included
are:
>
> SakaiPerson Service (profile data)
> Type Service
> privacy service
> archive service
> import service
>
> The project site can be viewed at:
> http://source.sakaiproject.org/release/common/1.0.0-beta01/
> (Note experimental site no Sakai skins etc.)
>
> Edu-Services 1.0.0-beta01
> Edu-services contain core shared services that support teaching and
learning
> functionality in Sakai. It contains:
>
> Course management service
> Gradebook service
> Sections service
>
> The project site can be viewed at:
> http://source.sakaiproject.org/release/edu-services/1.0.0-beta01/
>
>
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