EDUC 6809 - Weekly Reading #9

This is written in response to Responding & Assessing by Sonya C. Borton & Brian Huot

Quote:

"Similarly, an important assessment criteria for a multimodal text might be whether a student has taken advantage of the specific affordances, or capabilities, of each modality." (Borton & Huot)

Official seal of the
U.S. Senate

I am really trying to take advantage of the visual image in the learning adventure example I'm creating this week. I don't know if I'll use this in my project, but here's a story for you:

I get easily distracted when I research.... I tend to ask myself lots of questions and follow those answers even when I know it won't be useful to my project. This happened while I was trying to find the seal of each house of Congress.

Alternative seal of the
U.S. Senate

I kept finding "alternative seals" and not the "official" seal - which seemed weird to me. It turns out the Senate uses their "official" seal only rarely - mostly to ratify treaties and on impeachment papers! As a result, an "alternative seal" was created for common use. The same is true for the House of Representatives, except I couldn't find a visual for the "official" seal. According to Wikipedia "The official seal depicts the House side of the Capitol building, but is not used as a visual symbol." Fascinating!


Questions

1. What should the assessments of multimodal text provide for students?
An expectation of what a multimodal text should include and a framework for understanding the rhetorical nature of the final product. Multimodal texts are even more important to have an assessment for (than traditional texts) because students and teachers have less experience in "authoring, designing and thinking rhetorically about multimodal texts."

2. What are the benefits to using formative assessment when asking students to compose multimodal texts?
Creating a formal assessment becomes part of the learning experience. Learning to create a formal assessment (via a rubric or other form) of their own work (and the work of others) helps students make decisions about the effectiveness of their own texts. It emphasizes the process of creating the text vs. just getting the project done. It provides the students with a greater understanding of what the process is and what goes into the creation of it.

3.How do you feel about collaboratively constructing rubrics or assessment criteria with students?
I think this is a great way to reinforce key concepts and to put the responsibility of learning onto the student. I have had success with creating assessment criteria in the past - although I've never called it such (I don't give grades so the language is different). For example, we do a "Career Awareness" activity in the first few days of my SPOKES class. Part of the activity is creating a powerpoint about a chosen career.  I show a sample one and then we make a list of what criteria/research is needed to complete the project. I have, however, never included an image or sound criteria list but I see that it is needed. Looking back (especially after reading this article) I can understand now why some students just created a "word" powerpoint and I always had to encourage them to go and add photos and transitions. The problem was that I didn't emphasize that part of the criteria. That's going to change moving forward.

Additional Resource

Creating Rubrics Through Negotiable Contracting and Assessment

This is an article with both practical advice and real world examples of teachers finding success in putting student-created rubrics to work in the classroom.

Sources
Borton, S & Huot, B; Responding and assessing, Multimodal composition: Resources for teachers, 99-111, 2007.