Evaluating/Assessing blogging
Posted February 18th, 2008 by namckeand
I know we are at the end of the session, but one topic that I am interested in that I don’t think we have talked about is the evaluation or assessment of student blogging. If you have to give students grades, how do you or would you give them credit for blogging? Would you count the posts and comments, evaluate them and grade as you would any writing assignments, or what? I would be very interested in our collective thoughts on this.
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Nancy: Have a look at this wiki page.
I’m also interested in discussing this. I’ll come back.
To answer you question, I refer back to Chris Lehman´s post you direct us to in your blog, and quote him directly.
…. how, what and why we choose to assess says a lot about what we value. If we want life-long learners, what are the assessments that value that? If we believe in collaboration as a goal, does handing out grades on a 100 point scale where kids can argue between what a 94 and a 95 means encourage that? Grading is, at the end of the day, a construct any way you slice it.
Evaluation will depend on the learning outcomes "you" or "your institution" is seeking. If you use the blog for learners to post assignments, then you are testing and grading whether the students are responding and reproducing what you have told them to do. Is it language correctness (grammar/structure), fluency (vocabulary, expressions), appropriacy? Or would you evaluate them on the use of the blog (appropriacy of links, images, number of comments and posts?)
Thanks, Gabriela. It looks interesting and has a rubric somewhat like what I have used. I will have to look at it more closely on the weekend whan I have more time.
It would never occur to me to grade blogs on grammatical accuracy. I’m definitely more on the numbers and quality of posts and comments end of the spectrum. But I wonder if grading blogs on any basis is appropriate. For that matter, is requiring students to blog appropriate?
In my former job, I could assign grades on whatever basis I wanted really. So I counted posts. But then, of course, there are good posts that show evidence of thought and others that are not so great, to say the least. So I want something more then just numbers to go by.
I remember reading a rather complicated rubric for blog posts that Dennis Jerz did a few years ago. I blogged about it at the time. I also looked at it again when I developed a rubric last year. I want to encourage throught and communication in blogging. I think that they way I choose to evaluate blogs can either aid or hurt that process. That’s why I wanted to discuss the topic and get input from others.
Some time ago, I created these pages to help my teenage students in their writing assignments.
Understand
Keywords
Reflect
Assessing Media
The Australian Flexible Network has also published a very clear Community Guideline which is worth giving to students who are about to start publishing online.
However, blogging is much more than learning how to write, commenting or having a voice. It is about media/critical literacy, understanding and evaluating the digital environment you are immersed in.
Here is a good example for discussion. What do you make of it?
Great places to start the discussion, Bee. I want to look at the example you linked to with your rubric in mind to see what I come up with. But that will have to wait until I get home from work.
Last year I used Rubistar to assess my students blogs. I created the rubric on multimedia and there you can add whatever you want. It takes only 5 minutes to create a grid but always remember to save it in your computer.
Jennifer, I would be interested to know what you looked at in your assessments. Would you be willing to share the rubric with us?
Now, to Bee’s suggested reading…
The piece seems to meet the standard of authentic writing for an audience, although I am not sure the audience is receiving it as well as might be expected — at least if you read the comments. Max’s voice is pretty strong and clear. It is hard to tell from one post whether or not he really evaluates anything. Using your criteria, Bee, I would give him a good grade for this post, but I don’t know that I would feel good about it.
If, as you say and as I believe, blogging is more than learning to write and developing voice, then that "other" needs to be evaluated somehow. If it isn’t, how will a student know how well or poorly she is doing in that regard? But I wonder if it can be quantified.
One thing that I would want to evaluate in student blogging would be growth. That could include developing voice or writing about more substantive topics or a variety of other things. Maybe those criteria could even be agreed on ahead of time by both the teacher and the student. At the beginning of the semester, after a few posts, maybe the teacher and student sit down for a conference to talk abot the blog. If its strengths and weaknesses could be discussed at that time, then a plan could be developed for improving the blog over the course of the semester. If I start out with an identifiable voice, then that would not be something I would need to work on that semester. But maybe I don’t really intereact with ideas or with other bloggers. That could be a goal and would be evaluated.
This is the kind of reflection I want to do as part of this session. Thanks for helping me to do it!