Cybercoaching, rubrics, and constructivism - week 6

Cybercoaching and Rubrics

Clip art by Dake 

I love the idea of teacher as coach and mentor.  When I give a test, I call it "game day".  I tell the students that we have been practicing up to this point (I am the coach) and now it is time for the real game (summative assessment)!  We say 1,2,3 go chem! It's a fun way to approach a test.

The readings this week, however, made me think of how I need to improve this coaching role. Naomi Jeffery Petersen's points out in her article, Cybercoaching: Rubrics, Feedback, and Metacognition, Oh My! (2005), that coaching is the giving of feedback to improve and develop skills before the final assessment.  This can be done through formative assessments. A key coaching component is then to adjust the instruction as needed after these assessments.  I had thought that I was doing formative assessments correctly, but I think they were more like mini summative assessments.  I assumed that after a quiz, the students were making adjustments themselves before the test.  I also was not requiring any proof that they had made any changes. This was more like the students were self coaching (or at least I hoped they were self coaching).  I realize that I need to change this.  The key now is how?  I am looking into adding some activities or specialized requirements after a quiz so that true improvements can occur.

What about my other types of assessments - projects, lab reports, etc.?  The article also emphasized the use of rubrics as a formative assessment.  I, once again, thought I was using them correctly.  I would give the students the rubric before the assignment.  It was helpful, for them, but again not truly formative or coaching.  I want to include using the rubric on a draft version first (which I had not done).  Then students can make adjustments and improvements before the final version is completed.  I am not sure how much time this would involve, so I may have to rely on peer assessment also, and some peer coaching.  Lots of things to think about!

Constructivism

Here I felt a little better about my teaching.  I love to give students problems in the lab especially where I do not give them any procedures.  Students have to rely on previous knowledge and then adapt it to the new learning challenge.  This is one of the key components in a constructivist approach.  The labs are active, rely on past knowledge, intentional, (sometimes very authentic) and cooperative - all attributes of meaningful learning as listed in Bill Brandon's article on Applying Instructional Systems Processes to Constructivist Learning Environments.  I just need to keep this in mind when I have my online activities too!

Bloom's Taxonomy and Rubrics - Week 5 Reflections

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a familiar topic to me, but sadly not one that I use enough.  We have targets (objectives written to the student.  "I can describe.... " Instead of  "The student will describe..." ) that we put together as a department for each of our courses.  We have talked about including higher order thinking but we have never sat down to analyze our targets to see where they all fit.  I was surprised to see how many were in the lower level thinking skills. I would like to (when time permits!) re-examine each unit's targets and add some higher level ones if lacking.  I would also then add higher level activities and assessments to measure them. There are a lot of resources online.  I found these diagrams very helpful.

Note:  Top diagram from nlst6dh at this link and bottom diagram from Doug Belshaw at this link.

Rubrics

Rubrics are great for teachers and students.  As a teacher, it not only makes grading easier, it also helps process what you actually want out of the assignment.  Deciding the categories are criteria before the assignment is given is clarifying for both teachers and students.  I find the rubistar online rubric generator an excellent resource.  I don't know if I would be anxious to use rubrics without such help.  I have attached my rubric for a periodic table activity that I made with rubistar.

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Assessment is a learning experience! Week 4

I so resonated with this week's video and readings on performance assessment.  This is where I wish my school was headed.  I am always pushing for authentic performance assessments, while the school is interested in writing better multiple choice questions and having uniform paper and pencil test.  I have stuck with my convictions, and am still allowed to do my own finals and exams.  In order not to be seen as too revolutionary, this has often meant giving two tests - a lab performance-based test and the traditional multiple choice and short answer test.  As I stated in the Week 1 blog, I feel the performance based assessment is a learning experience.  I was delighted to hear the same phrase in the video on Comprehensive Assessment: An Overview by Edutopia.

In the related article by Roberta Furger, it states that"...you can't assess a student's deep understanding of a subject and their ability to apply a concept through a traditional paper-and-pencil, crank-out-the formulas kind of assessment.  I have argued with my colleagues that the best way to find out if a student can apply the chemistry problems is for them to perform experiments in a lab, similar to the ideas in the article - If you want to know if a student understands how to make a souffle - they need to make it! - not answer questions about it!  I was energized and envious about all the exciting projects students were doing in other classrooms, racing electric cars, designing buildings and dueling with robots!  This is the challenge to come up with authentic robust projects. As we also learned this week there are many online tools available for assessment, "Survey, quizzes and Test Builders, Reflection, Peer-to Peer Collaboration and Audio Video Production, as shown in our website.  However, I do not just want to change my assessments from paper and pencil to a video, unless producing the video has a deeper component to it.  I am struggling with how to make this all happen in my classroom (with school restraints) and with my numerous targets (objectives) that all need to be covered, but I am working on it!

The E-storm is brewing! Reflection on Week 3

At the beginning of the week I was unsure of what Dr. Bonk meant in his article on the Perfect E-Storm describing the effects of emerging technology, enormous learner demand, enhanced pedagogy and erased budgets until I felt the storm myself . This week as a teacher, my lesson using Chromebooks failed due to the students not being allowed (security prevention) to add an extension called Screencastify to their Chromebooks to create videos of their presentations - then as a student, I felt a little overwhelmed with the numerous technologies that I needed to learn or update (test generators, concept maps, Weebly web page, and e-portfolio).  Fortunately, the storm has subsided some in time for me to update my Blog!  Despite the Bonk article being old in technology years (2004), he did point to 30 emerging technologies that were for the most part still represent current technology.  We looked at a few of them this week - Online quizzes and exams, peer-to-peer collaboration, videos, and reflection.  I personally reviewed an online quiz program called Testmoz. It was very quick and easy to use and produced a very useful and visual report that could also be downloaded to excel.  It's major drawback is that you cannot add images or videos with your questions, but if you don't need them, I highly recommend the program. Here is a link to my more complete review.

Additionally, we learned about concept mapping and its use for designing a unit.  The map included objectives, activities and assessments.  When all put together, a teacher can better see the overview, connections, and variety of instruction/assessment included in their unit.  I started one for my periodic table unit, which I am teaching next! I used a program called creately.

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