We've just had an extra Meeting 3, where three students who couldn't make it last week turned up and gave their presentations. They all did reasonably well, and I managed to get their feedback to them the same evening. The whole process took about an hour, and I only did the three presentations.
This is par for the course for this kind of course - there's always someone who can't make it at the same time as everyone else, so you just have to have a sufficiently flexible schedule to allow for times like this one.
Wednesday 26 March 2008
Wednesday 19 March 2008
Assessment 1 at Course Meeting 3
There were fewer students present this time around … but I don't think they were frightened off by the assessment! I'd heard from three of them that circumstance prevented their attending, and I'm going to organise a new meeting next week for those that had to miss the meeting.
Most of the activity was concentrated on the presentations themselves (you can read about the formalities of that on the How to Pass! page within the Business Pages section of the course web site. These assessments pose something of a lesson-planning problem, since you have to give each student enough time to present, to ask questions and to receive feedback. Everyone who presented exceeded the limit of 5 minutes by about 30 seconds (they were very regular!), and each 'package' (of presentation and feedback) took about 10 minutes in all. That means that a group of 24 students would need the entire two hours in order to present.
As it was, we started with a warm-up, and finished with some practice for the role play exam next time around, so you would realistically need 2.5 hours to assess 24 students.
This assessment process makes very high demands on the teacher. You have to be fully concentrated all the time, and be able to give both instant and detailed feedback, whilst managing to record everything, and avoiding making statements to the students which bring them down, rather than lifting them up! Who says men don't have simultaneous capacity! I prepared a new layout on the course database (and upgraded it this morning), to make my marking clearer both to me and to the students. I showed everyone a copy of my marksheet before they began.
This morning I added a field for my detailed comments, and so was able to generate a .pdf document for each student with her mark and my comment on it. I refrained from giving numerical marks publicly yesterday evening. This is an ethical question for me: specific judgements should be made privately, in my opinion, although making more general statements about how I felt they did is part of my public job.
I haven't heard yet what the students think about my marking and feedback … but I daresay I will soon!
One magic moment last night was when one of the students let us all know where she was in real life last night. She usually logs in from her office just across the yard from where I sit … but last night she was at her sister's house just outside Tel-Aviv in Israel! We wouldn't have know if she hadn't told us …
Most of the activity was concentrated on the presentations themselves (you can read about the formalities of that on the How to Pass! page within the Business Pages section of the course web site. These assessments pose something of a lesson-planning problem, since you have to give each student enough time to present, to ask questions and to receive feedback. Everyone who presented exceeded the limit of 5 minutes by about 30 seconds (they were very regular!), and each 'package' (of presentation and feedback) took about 10 minutes in all. That means that a group of 24 students would need the entire two hours in order to present.
As it was, we started with a warm-up, and finished with some practice for the role play exam next time around, so you would realistically need 2.5 hours to assess 24 students.
This assessment process makes very high demands on the teacher. You have to be fully concentrated all the time, and be able to give both instant and detailed feedback, whilst managing to record everything, and avoiding making statements to the students which bring them down, rather than lifting them up! Who says men don't have simultaneous capacity! I prepared a new layout on the course database (and upgraded it this morning), to make my marking clearer both to me and to the students. I showed everyone a copy of my marksheet before they began.
This morning I added a field for my detailed comments, and so was able to generate a .pdf document for each student with her mark and my comment on it. I refrained from giving numerical marks publicly yesterday evening. This is an ethical question for me: specific judgements should be made privately, in my opinion, although making more general statements about how I felt they did is part of my public job.
I haven't heard yet what the students think about my marking and feedback … but I daresay I will soon!
One magic moment last night was when one of the students let us all know where she was in real life last night. She usually logs in from her office just across the yard from where I sit … but last night she was at her sister's house just outside Tel-Aviv in Israel! We wouldn't have know if she hadn't told us …
Thursday 13 March 2008
Getting ready for Assessment 1
Once again, things have been really hectic since I last had a chance to give the Oral Production course some attention (I've just given feedback on about 55 Business Writing Warm-Ups …). However, things have been fairly quiet on that front too. I've been contacted by one worried student who wanted to know when the extra Assessment 1 material would be put out on the web site … and now, finally, it is.
What I've done today is to construct a page of hints and tips about making presentations (which is what Assessment 1 is all about), make a blog entry on the course blog and a podcast which is now out on the podcast site.
What happens next is that I plan the lesson in detail. One of the tasks I have is planning the activities for the people who aren't making presentations at a given moment, and another is creating a well-balanced lesson which doesn't *only* deal with presentations.
The assessment is going to need to be handled sensitively too. I feel that it's important that feedback is given individually and privately when you're allocating marks to people, but, on the other hand, both the presenter and the listeners want some kind of indication from me of what I thought of it. I don't think there's an instruction manual for this kind of teacher activity - I'll have to rely on my experience …
I've also got a couple of role plays to get out on the course web site: a practice one for Course Meeting 3 and the exam one for Course Meeting 4.
What I've done today is to construct a page of hints and tips about making presentations (which is what Assessment 1 is all about), make a blog entry on the course blog and a podcast which is now out on the podcast site.
What happens next is that I plan the lesson in detail. One of the tasks I have is planning the activities for the people who aren't making presentations at a given moment, and another is creating a well-balanced lesson which doesn't *only* deal with presentations.
The assessment is going to need to be handled sensitively too. I feel that it's important that feedback is given individually and privately when you're allocating marks to people, but, on the other hand, both the presenter and the listeners want some kind of indication from me of what I thought of it. I don't think there's an instruction manual for this kind of teacher activity - I'll have to rely on my experience …
I've also got a couple of role plays to get out on the course web site: a practice one for Course Meeting 3 and the exam one for Course Meeting 4.
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