In evaluating student work in units, it is important that you consider the use of performance or “authentic” assessment as a means of evaluating students’ written responses, project work, or productions.

Assessment of authentic learning [ Glenn Brown and Michelle Craig ]

George Lucas Foundation: Assessment

George Lucas Foundation: Assessing Project-Based Work [ click on video ]

The ERIC website for assessment and evaluation

Coalition for Essential Schools [ material on authentic assessment ]

Formulating criteria and rubrics. To evaluate student performance, you need to formulate specific criteria and rubrics consistent with your goals (see Module 2). For example, if you wanted to evaluate students’ analysis of a literary adaptation, you may want to develop criteria associated with their ability to critically examine the film adaptation relative to the original text. Chris Worsnop (2000) developed a set of criteria for evaluating students’ depth of perception or critical insight involved in responding to feature films:

• Levels of Insight

  • Individuals reveal their level of insight into media by their reactions.

  • Identification with the plot/story (fabula)

  • Identification with the character/star (persona)

  • Identification with the author (creator)

  • Adopting a critical stance (adjudicator)

• Plot (Fabula)

  • Understanding of the story, its development and syntax

  • Ability to recognize universal “mythical” elements

• Character (Persona)

  • Understanding of characterization

  • Understanding complexity of performance and psychology

  • Understanding interplay between character and other elements in the film

  • Ability to connect characters to universals, stereotypes, other characters in other works

• Author (Creator)

  • Detection of concrete and conceptual work of the author (editing, script, composition, sound, camera placement, camera movement, ideology, etc.)

  • Detection of interaction of various elements of author’s skill

  • Ability to connect to other work of same author

• Synthesis (Adjudicator)

  • Seeing the work as an integrated whole

  • Identifying excellence, gaps, excesses, deficiencies

  • Use of primary and secondary sources as evidence

  • Ability to predict based on multiple insights of the oeuvre

Criteria such as these could then be transformed into specific rubrics related to specifying different levels in a students’ perception and insight, levels reflecting, for example, “exceeds expectations,” “meets expectations,” and “needs work.” On-line rubric templates such as Rubistar can be used to devise these rubrics.

University of Northern Iowa Professional Development [ lots of rubrics for different types of work ]

EnglishCompanion.com [ Jim Burke’s rubrics for journals, projects, portfolios ]

Journal rubric

Rubric for video production

Mertler, Craig A. (2001). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(25).

Moskal, Barbara M. (2000). Scoring rubrics: what, when and how?. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(3).

Creating a Rubric from Scratch [ Chicago Public Schools ]

Creating portfolios. One way of integrating the assessment of student work in a unit or course is by having students create a portfolio, or collection of work, which showcases their growth, knowledge, and understanding of their work in the unit or course. One is a working or process portfolio which is intended to help students keep track of materials and assignments as they move through literary experiences. The product or show portfolio is a more formal collection of work chosen by the student with an introduction written by the student explaining his or her growth.

Central to portfolios is student reflection on their work. Students could reflect on what they want to learn in a unit and course based on the goals you provide them. They could then reflect on what they are learning and whether they are achieving their goals. They could also reflect on difficulties and challenges in their learning. It is also important that you encourage them to reflect honestly and candidly. One problem with a lot of portfolio reflection is that students engage in reflection that “sounds good,” but doesn’t entail critical self-assessment.

E-portfolios. Students could also create e-portfolios based on digital versions of their texts, images, and/or video clips, something that would work well in a media studies course. Given the hypertext nature of digital texts, students could construct links between their different texts that display their reflections on connections between their work.

Because students may be participating in on-line chats as a part of a media studies course, they could also include examples of their own or others’ chat participation and reflections on what they learned through their chat exchanges as well as changes in the nature and quality of their participation over time. Alice Trupe (2003) provides the following suggestions for students to include in a course organized around on-line, chat, or MOO interactions:

• One text might be comprised of a selection of important chunks of text from a single computer conference or MOO session, with an accompanying short analytical text explaining the value these excerpts had for the writer. For example, the student might choose a thread that showed how her thinking on a topic evolved through discussion with one or more of her peers.

• A similar text might be comprised of a selection of conference or listserv posts that showed the evolution of a student’s thinking over several weeks. Or the student might choose to show several short texts that demonstrated her evolving skills as a writer.

• Another text I would like to see in a portfolio is a weaving together of several students' conference or email texts to make a particular point, a document that might also include quotation from print texts or Web documents. This text might be produced by a single writer or by a collaborative writing group.

• At least one text in the portfolio would include the use of desktop publishing techniques to convey meaning. This might be a word-processed report or newsletter.

• I would, further, like to see a good one-page evaluation of information found on a Web page, authored singly or collaboratively, that would demonstrate students’ ability to practice research skills in electronic environments.

• Paired texts would include a traditional essay or research paper plus a Web page on the same topic, ideally with a short reflective paper that analyzes how writing for the Web changes the writing requirements of presenting the argument or information.

• I would like to see an outline of the same paper prepared with presentation software for oral delivery.

• Another text I would like to see is record of one or more MOO sessions that could illustrate MOO literacy, involving commands for successfully navigating the environment or building in it, interacting with others, and manipulating virtual objects (incorporating students’ rooms, fictional identities, bots, ASCII art, etc.).

In evaluating e-portfolios that are created in a different digital mode that traditional essay writing and that are based on hypertext links, you need to consider employing criteria that are consistent with creating digital texts. As noted in the discussion of judging web sites, effective writing in a digital mode requires the writer to go beyond simply presenting information to engage an audience in a highly interactive manner, including the use of visual images and hypertext links. At the same time, writers also need to be able to provide audiences with a clear sense of direction or road map as to how to navigate through their e-portfolio, as well as the rhetorical effectiveness in their use of visual illustrations of text material (Herrmann, 1991; Wilferth, 2003).

For more information on e-portfolios:

The Electronic Portfolio Development Process [ Helen Barrett ]

American Association of Higher Education: Electronic Portfolios

Use of e-porfolios in teacher education

NCATE: 400 students’ e-portfolios

For further reading on evaluation:

Sefton-Green, J., & Sinker, R. (Eds.) (2000). Evaluating creativity. New York: Routledge.

Smith, J.B. (2000). Journals and self assessment. Self-Assessment and Development in Writing: A Collaborative Inquiry. Jane Bowerman and Kathleen Blake Yancey, eds. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Stiggins, R. J., (2001). Student-involved classroom assessment 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Trumbull E., & Farr B. (2000). Grading and reporting student progress in an age of standards. Christopher-Gordon. Norwood, MA.

Worsnop, C. (1997). Assessing media work: Authentic assessment in media education. Lincoln, NE: Center for Media Literacy.

Module 12: Word document

Drawing on Existing Media Studies Curriculum

Studying Film Adaptations of Literature and Theater

Different Modes of Adaptation

Interpretive Strategies for Organizing Curriculum

Comparing Differences in Experience of Different Reading and Viewing Modes

Defining Narrative Development

Interpreting Characters’ Actions, Beliefs, Agendas, Goals

Contextualizing Texts in Terms of Cultural and Historical Worlds

Defining Intertextual / Hypertextual Connections Between Texts

Adopting Alternative Voices and Discourses

Judging Quality of Literary and Media Texts

Designing Units

Techniques for Developing Units

Evaluation and Assessment of Learning

References

Ideas for Integrating Media into English/Literature Instruction