Educative Assessment

 

By Aburk018 at English Wikibooks [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Forward-Looking Assignment

Today, I received an email from a professor who stated that 6 out of 9 students in his graduate research methods class used articles that were NOT peer reviewed. To mitigate this from happening after students take my Freshman Foundations course, I will have students consider this assignment.

Posing the Question

One of the course learning objectives is "Ask relevant questions about the origins, context, and authority of information while challenging the everyday acceptance of information quality." To bring in a real-world application, I will ask students to consider who and what defines authority in their field of choice. Questions that students will need to consider are:

• How do I know that my source is credible?
• Does if make a difference where I find the source?
• What defines authority in my field?
• What steps should I take to make sure that I have a quality source?

Students will need to develop a set of field-specific criteria.

Criteria and Standards

Criteria	Exceeds Standards	Meets Standards	Beginner
Search Strategy	Student used library databases to locate peer-reviewed articles and added additional limiters, such as subject searching, date, or publication	Student used library databases, but may not have used any limiters	Student performed basic Google searching
Evaluation	Student went beyond relying on limiters and used Ullrich’s Periodicals Directory to verify peer-review status of publication or performed additional searches to discover author’s credentials and/or publication history	Student relied on the fact that articles were included in the library databases as a means of establishing credibility	Student did not evaluate retrieved sources

Self-Assessment

Students could use the rubric as a checklist to see what gaps in knowledge are present.

FIDeLity Feedback

In general, one assignment in the Freshman Foundations course is a weekly blog that students will use to reflect about learning. I generally check posts every day in order to give immediate feedback and curtail any off topic posts. Each blog post has a set rubric that students can use as a guideline for completing the assignment. In addition to the rubric, I also give substantive, holistic comments that praise students for what is working while mentioning areas that show deficits.