Do red pens give you a headache? Does correcting formative tests for acquired knowledge make you dizzy? Are you looking for ways to save time…or trees? Do you want to be more efficient? Are you dreaming of pedagogically-viable strategies and techniques? Are you looking for change?
Evaluation plays a significant role in the teaching profession. Among the various facets of this important responsibility, feedback presents many challenges, and correction is sometimes considered an onerous burden or at least a less-than-inspiring task. Luckily, there is a whole array of digital methods and tools that can become your allies!
In this sixth part of our series of articles that accompany our In-depth Report on Evaluation and Digital Feedback, we present digital tools for collaborative and self-evaluation.
Students in the Evaluation (and Learning) Process
Remember all those times you corrected your neighbour’s test in elementary school or high school? Perhaps you use this method with your students for simple knowledge tests. Besides reducing the burden of correction for the teacher, it gets the students involved in the process, and group correction can encourage and enhance review. Peer feedback and correction can be excellent learning strategies. For example, asking students to correct each other’s texts develops correction and language improvement strategies. The same is true for internalizing concepts when students are asked to comment on concept maps or slide shows created by their peers. In terms of learning, video feedback strategies (article in French) provide significant benefits. The teacher can give feedback to the students while watching the video of a simulation or a real situation. These benefits are further enhanced when the students self-evaluate and receive feedback from their peers.
So why not take advantage of IT to use these strategies more regularly by setting up activities that are conducive to digital correction and audio or video feedback among students?
Team projects also involve the participation of each member in the evaluation process.
- What contribution did each member make toward the project?
- How did each student behave within the team?
- How did the students fulfil their respective roles?
For issues like these, there is no better solution than co-evaluation. The teacher prepares an evaluation tool specifically for the project. This is a common strategy, but it is often supported by paper grids or digital versions that offer few benefits. You can, however, set up a more effective process that will automatically compile the results for each student or at least simplify the management of the rubrics. To this end, the Moodle Workshop Activity is specially designed for self-evaluation and co-evaluation and can be adapted for complex pedagogical scenarios. Survey tools and cloud-based office tools can also be considered for this purpose.
Finally, for digital presentation, learning or evaluation, e-portfolios are an excellent way to support the students’ engagement in their learning, promote reflective practice and encourage frequent self-evaluation.
Strategies such as correcting another student’s work, getting feedback from peers, co-evaluating a team project, self-evaluating and using a reflective approach for the learning process can all be supported by information technology, just like evaluation tasks carried out by the teacher.
The References by topic section of this In-depth Report offers a lot of complementary resources about involving students in the evaluation process.
Tools to consider
- Survey tools:Survey Monkey, Google Forms and Microsoft Forms
- An evaluation tool (grid, chart) in a document saved in the cloud and shared by the team: Office online or Google (using the Office365 or G Suite educational platforms facilitates collaboration)
- The Moodle Workshop Activity
We invite you to visit our other articles in the AddICTive Tools for Evaluation series:
- AddICTive Tools for Evaluation: Digital Marking and Annotation
- AddICTive Tools for Evaluation: Monitoring In-Progress Assignments
- AddICTive Tools for Evaluation: Audio and Video Feedback
- AddICTive Tools for Evaluation: Online Quizzes
- AddICTive Tools for Evaluation: Clickers
Click on the link to to return to the landing page for our In-Depth Report on Correction, Feedback and Evaluation: Inspiring Practices and AddICTive Tools.
Are you inspired by these possibilities? Share your discoveries with your colleagues using the Share function! If you are already using technology to support your evaluation tasks, please share your experiences with other Profweb readers in the Comments section below.
