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Assessment with a Difference: Waypoint Empowers Students, Faculty and Administrators in all Models of Learning. Rosemary W. Skeele Vivienne B. Carr Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ 07079 USA. 13 th Annual Sloan-C Conference on Online Learning November 7 - 9 2007.
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Assessment with a Difference: Waypoint Empowers Students, Faculty and Administrators in all Models of Learning Rosemary W. Skeele Vivienne B. Carr Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ 07079 USA 13th Annual Sloan-C Conference on Online Learning November 7 - 9 2007
Background - Seton Hall University • Private, Catholic, mid-sized, northeastern university • Technology accepted & promoted – mobile, wireless computing provided
Online Courses • College of Education and Human Services • Seton World Wide • Graduate programs in Instructional Design & Technology • School Library Media Specialist Certification Program • Future – Teacher Certification
Assessment: Step in a Larger Process for Accreditation (NCATE and Middle States) Step 1: Determine what a portfolio means to your program. Define goal Step 2: Identify what we want students to learn. Set objectives • Align with mission • Look at institutional, state, and national standards • Research other programs Step 3: Describe content and tasks. Develop curriculum & activities • Map Curriculum • Learn and integrate new teaching practices • Revise syllabi Step 4: Determine whether we met our objectives. Assess & revise learning • Develop evaluation instruments; Create rubrics • Analyze results • Revise curriculum based on results
Performance Standards - Rubrics A rubric is a set of categories which define and describe the important components of the work being completed, critiqued, or assessed. Each category contains a gradation of levels of completion or competence with a score assigned to each level and a clear description of what criteria need to be met to attain the score at each level.
Why Rubrics? • Teachers and students share a common understanding of the project goals and criteria • Formative Evaluation • Self-evaluation • Peer Evaluation • Summative Evaluation • Establish Inter-rater Reliability for Multiple Sections of a Course • Improve Student Performance
Problem: How to Simplify Gathering and Analyzing Data Our Solution
Rubric Library “T” indicates rubric shared by a team.
Feedback • Can be: • Mailed • Printed
The use of Waypoint is not without problems. Some of these include: • The terminology used by Waypoint is not typical of standard rubrics: • Rubrics are called assignments • Criteria are elements • Descriptors of performance are referred to as observations. • The instruction guide is difficult to understand, making training sessions on system use a necessity. • A Waypoint administrator must be designated to make certain changes and corrections and to create data downloads, which can be imported into spreadsheet and database programs to create charts, graphics and reports.
Why we are using Waypoint? • It is linked to Blackboard: • creating a user-friendly Web-based portal for Blackboard users. • leveraging the University’s technology investment. • Evaluations are Web-based • Waypoint style rubrics familiar to most US educators, Waypoint is linked to Rubistar – familiar, easy to use rubric generator. • Entering data in Waypoint is easy, Grading time is shortened: descriptions of common errors can be built into checklists. • Completed rubrics can be shared by email directly to the student. • Rubrics shared through Blackboard for faculty or peer review. • Data can easily be aggregated from multiple sections of one course taught by different instructors. • Evaluation data for students and programs is easy to generate: • evaluation tools (statistics generators) built into the product; • data can be imported into common graphing and report tools (Excel and Access).
Rosemary W. Skeele skeelero@shu.eduVivienne B. Carrcarrvivi@hu.edu
