Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Assessing Projects through Bloom and Time

In "Assessing Web 2.0 Projects Through Bloom and Time"http://eduwithtechn.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/assessing-web-2-0-projects-through-bloom-and-time/, the premise is that using a sort of rubric scale, students are graded on their use of higher order thinking skills in the production of an artifact and the time it took them to produce the work. Higher level thinking skills are given a higher ranking than lower level skills. That number is then multiplied by the number of days the student took to produce the artifact. I agree with the hierarchy used in evaluating the thinking skills, but the numbers assigned to days does not make sense. For example, if a student only used comprehension level thinking over a period of 6 days, they would receive a score of (2x6) 12 which is more than a student would receive if they used evaluation level thinking over a period of 2 days, which would equate to a score of (5.5x2) 11. It seems that the number of days should be accounted in reverse order. 1 day = 10pts, 2 days= 9 points, 3 days= 8pts, etc. That way, the first student would receive a (2X5) 10 and the second student would receive a (5.5x9) 49.5. I think this formula would be more fair in valuing both time and thinking.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting link. I hadn't previously seen a formula like this in use before. I appreciate how he is trying to assess the thinking and not the product.

    I think another error can come in the teacher's knowledge of Bloom's hierarchy. If the teacher is not aware if the student's thinking was "application" or "synthesis" then that affects their score. The teacher needs to be crystal clear about how that student came to their understanding, and the definition of each step of Bloom's.

    Thanks for sharing,

    -Lindsay

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