Monday, November 12, 2012

Resubmission in Formative Assessment

In this excellent blog post by a fellow educator, a great case is made for the opportunity to resubmit assignments as a formative assessment strategy (see Nov. 7 post on formative assessment). 

When I taught my course online at ETSU, whenever I gave a graded assignment back to a learner, I always gave them a chance to raise their grade by resubmission under certain circumstances. If the reason that the grade was low was due to poor grammar and writing, I required a documented visit to the Writing Center to precede a corrected resubmission. If the problem was related to content/course material, I would add additional questions to my feedback that would lead the learner in the direction I had been hoping that they would take on their first assessment attempt. By making sure that there were some new specific objectives to be met, I knew that the learner would not be able to simply rely on the feedback given to his or her peer to fulfill my requirements for resubmission. The resubmitted assignment always took on just a bit more depth than the original assignment—by design.

When the resubmission option was exercised, it worked well! But not everyone wanted a second chance. What are some strategies I could employ to inspire those who didn't take the opportunity to want to improve their learning, their grade and their overall course experience?

No comments:

Post a Comment