News

DAY 4 sessions for the 10th UTokyo FFP were held on November 9th and 10th. This time, the sessions featured “Evaluation.”

The main topics were as follows:

・Significance of evaluation
・Methods and targets of evaluation
・Formative evaluation and summative evaluation
・Reliability, validity, and efficiency of evaluation
・Measures to take after evaluation
・Rubrics

This time, we introduced activities and Q&A sessions where the participants comprehended the materials on “formative evaluation” and “summative evaluation” and explained the graphs shown on the materials to each other instead of the instructor giving a lecture about them. We assured the knowledge acquisition by having one of the participants explain the topics in the end, but “comprehending and explaining the topics by themselves” by handing the learners appropriate materials seemed to work better.

The UTokyo FFP participants work on exercises in creating rubrics during the session on evaluation every semester. “Knowing about rubrics” is completely different from “being able to create rubrics.” We emphasize the activity of creating rubrics that let participants consider the value and limits of rubrics in their own context.

It is challenging to create a rubric from scratch. Having another rubric with similar goals as an example and customizing it into your own rubric is one of the effective ways to ease the workload. Such examples are available on the following website:

AAC&U VALUE Rubrics (English)
American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) offers what they call “VALUE rubrics.” They are templates of rubrics for various tasks, which you can use and customize. You have to go through the “shopping cart,” but they are available for free download.

This time, rubrics were created in groups. Participants shared their rubrics with a method called “Gallery Walk,” where they examined others’ rubrics freely. One of the group members remained to explain the rubric they made, and the rest looked around to see the other groups’ rubrics. Another sharing method called “Poster Tour” will be used in the next session, so we would like the participants to contrast it with “Gallery Walk.”

This was the last session for the “provision of knowledge.” From the next session onward, we will review what we have learned so far and move on to microteaching sessions. We are already halfway through the course.