Evaluating Digital Products: Raising the Bar For Student Achievement, Bernajean Porter, BJP Consulting
We watched an example of a student-produced film about the bombing of Hiroshima and discussed how we would assess it. It was difficult to say since we weren’t the ones that gave the assignment, but it got the conversation started. Our speaker said that in many cases a scoring guide (i.e., rubric) isn’t even provided, or the scoring guide focuses exclusively on the mechanics of the product (e.g., number of images, number of PowerPoint slides). Too often, she says, the product is simply turned in without the kind of serious assessment that we usually give to more traditional writing assignments. I’ve observed this over the years as well, and have often felt like technological glitz has been substituted for high quality content. This is especially common with teachers who may not be very technosavvy themselves and may be more likely to be overly impressed with the polish that modern ditial tools can impart without any effort on the part of the student.
The speaker is against the idea of teachers creating their own rubrics, preferring instead to have teachers work in teams to develop common rubrics. Consistent standards will help students who have multiple teachers.
Porter’s book, Evaluating Digital Products, has lots of examples of scoring guides for 14 different types of assignments. Her Website, DigiTales, has a series of forms that teachers can use to create custom rubrics to guide the students’ work. She stresses that no technology should be used until the scripts and storyboards are conferenced and the content is solid. She believes that students should be encouraged to connect the content they’re presenting to their own context in a way that answers the “so what?” question.
This was a great session. It validated a lot of things that I’ve observed over the years. It may sound counter-intuitive, but I think we need to get the technology out of the assessment of digital projects. It’s not about the tech, it’s about the learning. I will definitely be starting a conversation about these issues with teachers back home.
