Instructional design/DS Assessment

Assessment Considerations

Digital Storytelling (DST) expands the ways in which you can assess what your students learn, and in which they assess their own learning. DST projects aligned with course content -- whether used as the core of the course or as a final project -- are created in stages, allowing assessment to be carried out after a student completes each project stage, from mapping through production. It allows social negotiation through peer reviews, discussions and reflections, whether via student blogs, simple storytelling programs such as Storybird, or the use of Twitter hashtags and curation programs.

Rather than present you with a definitive rubric or assessment strategy, we offer 3 key factors to keep in mind while developing your assessment strategy.

1. Define Technology
2. Set Benchmarks
3. Establish Goals & Expectations

Define Technology

As you found in Learning Through Digital Stories, technology offers a dizzying array of avenues for creating stories. Rather than try to support them all, you need to define technologies you deem acceptable for students to use. This will create consistency among student projects, which can be vital for assessment. Second, it can provide structure and focus for non-artistic students.

Set Benchmarks

As you define each DST stage during your planning process, include benchmark assessments. Not only does this scaffold the project, but it provides students with valuable feedback at pivotal points within the project. Your benchmarks can vary greatly, depending on DST projects’ structure and the technologies you allow. For example benchmarks, see the case study presented below. These benchmarks will establish student progress, thus they typically fall at the completion of a project component.

Establish Goals & Expectations

Finally, you need to define your expectations for the quality and complexity of the finished product. These expectations can be set up as holistic or analytic as desired:

• Holistic Approach: Defines components that should be present, but not specific details. The grading occurs as an overall consideration of the final project and how it relates to final projects presented by classmates. A weakness of this approach is that grading can be subjective, since no specific details are defined.
• Analytic Approach: Defines all components and specific details that must be present, grading each student's project separately. A weakness of this approach is that the overall quality of the project can be missed during the grading process because of the focus on details.

Once you choose an approach, lay out goals and expectations as clearly as possible. Clearly defined expectations provide students with guidelines for their DST projects. Common places for these to appear are in syllabi, handouts for explanation of the project, and in the form of a rubric. We strongly recommend that assessment rubrics be presented to students in advance, as a way of clearly defining expectations.

Case Study

The instructor for a DST course at DePauw University utilized a number of technologies: Audacity, Soundcloud, Pixlr, Blogger, and Soundslides. The instructor allowed used mastery of the technology to become a benchmark in the DST project students were required to create. Students submitted a completed project for each technology.

Stage/Technology	Deliverable
Audacity	Recorded and edited interview
Soundcloud	Final interview, students were required to comment on each others’ finished products
Pixlr	Edited images
Blogger	Display of components, reflections of work, comments on others’ work
Soundslides	Finished digital story created with Soundslides the embedded on the Blogger

Once these benchmarks had been established, the instructor took a holistic assessment approach by providing general guidelines and an overall rubric used for grading. These were presented to the students at the beginning of the course in the course syllabus.

Application

Now that you have a clear understanding of assessment consideration, click edit for the following scenarios and add an assessment strategy that addresses the 3 key factors learned. Please sign your name using the signature wikicode. Once you have completed the exercise, view the Answer Key.

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Scenario 1

A 10th grade English teacher would like to introduce their students to DST for the book To Kill a Mockingbird. The students all have Twitter accounts and tweet on a regular basis. How could they best define technology, set benchmarks, and establish goals and expectations for this project?

Practice:

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Scenario 2

An Ethics Professor at a four-year University would like to introduce their students to DST as a way for students to express their experience and opinions on ethical topics. The students range in their technology use. How could they best define technology, set benchmarks, and establish goals and expectations for this project?

Practice:

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