October 2009 - The Edge of Tomorrow - Standing on the verge of a technologically educational revolution.

math

Help me understand this. Recently, I’ve come across several examples of a rubric being used in a way I don’t quite understand. The rubrics all had the standard four levels of proficiency for the criteria being assessed, and the levels moved in typical fashion with one being inadequate and four being exceptional. That’s all fairly standard practice as I understand it.

But here’s where I get confused.

The rubric then took each criterion score, and multiplied it by 3. So, if one were to gain a “3″ on any criterion, he or she would effectively earn a 9 out of 12 in that category. It seems the instructor used the multiplier so that in the end, the entire assignment was worth more points. I’ve seen a score multiplied by four or even five as well.

I’m not sure why someone would do this.

If you stop to consider, once you begin introducing a multiplier to a rubric, you are essentially removing the opportunity for a student to earn points in significant intervals. If a multiplier of five is used in a rubric, that means just one step from exceptional to proficient will cost the student 5 points, which is often half a letter grade. I’m not sure I understand why an assessment would be given if a student can’t earn each point along the way.

I know there’s a bigger topic here regarding points and grades and all that, but for this post, I’m just trying to understand the practice of inflating, or weighting, depending on how you want to name it, an assessment.

The same applies here to quizzes or tests or even assignments that are multiplied to make them worth more. I often see teachers administer a test that has 30 questions, then they make the test out of 100. That means every question a student gets wrong costs them 3.3 points. And I’ll admit, I certainly did this when I was a teacher. Looking back, I’m just not sure why I did it.

Anyone out there good enough at math to help me understand this? And can you explain why we want to do this to students?

Thanks to eriwst for the use of the Flickr image.

desks

*This is a reflection post required for my JHU-ISTE Leadership program.

This week we were asked to evaluate various room arrangements found within a classroom. It is quite intriguing to explore the various ways teachers choose to set up a classroom and what it communicates about the methodologies and pedagogical practice in play in a given setting. It seems there is great variety in the methods teachers use when determining exactly what setup to utilize, and the practice yields a myriad of implications for students as they engage the learning process.

The tradition room arrangement with students all sitting in rows is decreasing in frequency from my observations. More unique arrangements are being utilized in an attempt to foster more collaborative learning environments. There are certainly still classrooms that employ the traditional, and it seems that set up is more common at the secondary level than at the elementary. I believe this is the case for a multitude of reasons, one major reason being fewer teachers actually have their own classrooms in middle and high schools, thus, there is less opportunity to change the environment entirely to meet the teacher’s style.

It was quite apparent that most of the rooms that held a traditional arrangement, and did so for the duration of a class, were more invested in the direct instruction model. Some teachers did begin in the traditional arrangement, but then allowed for movement of the arrangement once group work or partner work began. Rooms that were arranged in a more unique manner were often centered around student discussion or student inquiry, and there was little time spent on specific direct instruction. One room even had students getting comfortable in bean bags and non-traditional seats, almost like something seen in a library, and when I was in the classroom, a Socratic discussion was taking place amongst the students about a specific piece of literature.

It was clear that in most cases, the teachers accounted for the daily traffic patterns that take place in a class period. The traditional setting has students moving only when they entered the classroom to take their seats and then again when they left the classroom. The unique arrangements often had students moving freely throughout the class, and the furniture may have served as obstacles in a given arrangement, but the students didn’t seem bothered by this in the least. One room was arranged in a double horse-shoe shape, and students in the center were constrained somewhat by the outer portion of the horseshoe. This seemed to bother some of the students as they weren’t able to move their seats or move away from their desks freely.

This exercise proved quite interesting. I was intrigued at how much I learned about a teacher simply by observing the arrangement of his or her space. I’m sure many supervisors observe the same when conducting formal or even informal observations of a teacher. I wonder how responsive teachers would be to dedicating a staff meeting or a portion of an inservice day to discuss and explore potential variety in the arrangements of a class. I would also gather that supervisors could use what they observe about class arrangements to provide specific staff development in the learning and teaching practices that may result from various arrangements.

The final part of my observation was focused on the computers available in a given classroom. Here again there was great variety. Some classes had four or five computer stations sitting on tables at the back of the room. Other classrooms shared a pod of computers in a common area just outside several classrooms. Some classes had checked out a computer cart of laptops, and they were using those resources during the lesson at their individual desks. There was great variety of setups depending on the physical setup of a given school.

It would be interesting to continue with this observation activity in the future as resources and pedagogy change to see if the change results in new ways to think of arranging the learning environment.