STAGE 1 - Involve students in defining the criteria that will be used to judge their performance. Involving students in determining the evaluation criteria initiates a negotiation. Neither imposing school goals nor acquiescing to student preferences is likely to be as successful as creating a shared set that students perceive to be meaningful. Workplace studies, for example, indicate that involving employees in making decisions about their work increases satisfaction and goal commitment. In addition to increasing student commitment to instructional goals, negotiating intentions enables teachers to help students set goals that are specific, immediate, and moderately difficult, characteristics that contribute to greater effort. It also provides an opportunity to influence students' orientations toward learning, a long term guidance effort, that is particularly timely in cooperative learning contexts since students sometimes adopt orientations in group learning (such as letting someone else do all the work) that impede learning. “The Next Best Thing Assignment” Expectation of Student/Designers: Students in groups of 3 or 4 are to draft a proposal for a concept or idea that will “make life better” · Is it technology based? · Does it make you safer? · Does it entertain? · Is “it” an “it”? · What does it cost? · Is it an improvement on something or of something? · Does it have to be built? · Is it alive? How will it make life better What are some potential consequences of creating or modify this "thing" or "creature" Expectation of Evaluators of concept: Evaluators (teachers and students) must decide which criteria are to be measured and develop language and
1. STAGE 1- Involve students in defining the The Next Best
Thing Assignment criteria that will be used to judge their
performance. Involving students in Expectation of
Student/Designers: determining the evaluation criteria initiates a
negotiation. Neither imposing school goals Students in groups of 3
or 4 are to draft a nor acquiescing to student preferences is
proposal for a concept or idea that will likely to be as successful
as creating a make life better shared set that students perceive to
be meaningful. Workplace studies, for Is it technology based?
example, indicate that involving employees Does it make you safer?
in making decisions about their work Does it entertain? increases
satisfaction and goal commitment. Is it an it? In addition to
increasing student What does it cost? commitment to instructional
goals, Is it an improvement on negotiating intentions enables
teachers to something or of something? help students set goals that
are specific, Does it have to be built? immediate, and moderately
difficult, Is it alive? characteristics that contribute to greater
effort. It also provides an opportunity to How will it make life
better influence students' orientations toward What are some
potential consequences of learning, a long term guidance effort,
that is creating or modify this "thing" or "creature" particularly
timely in cooperative learning contexts since students sometimes
adopt orientations in group learning (such as Expectation of
Evaluators of concept: letting someone else do all the work) that
impede learning. Evaluators (teachers and students) must decide
which criteria are to be measured and develop language and method
to do so. STAGE 2- Teach students how to apply the Using a
Checklist or a Rubric developed criteria to their own work. If
students have through collaboration between teacher and been
involved in a negotiation in Stage 1, students. These tools are to
be used first to the criteria that result will be an integrated
inform students' actions, processes, products set of personal and
school goals. Since the both in progress and final as well as goals
are not entirely their own, students functioning as the standard
against which need to see examples of what they mean in the final
product is measured. practice. These models or examples help
students understand specifically what the criteria mean to them.
Teacher modeling is very important, as is providing many Teachers
are to model their approach to an numerous examples of what
particular activity with a standard firmly in mind and categories
mean, using language that to show students how the standard
informed connects criteria to evidence in the their actions,
process and product creation. appraisal.
2. STAGE 3- Give students feedback on their self-evaluations.
Students' initial comprehension of the criteria and how to apply
them are likely to be imperfect. Teachers need to help students
recalibrate their understanding by arranging for students to
receive feedback (from the teacher, peers, and themselves) on their
attempts to implement the criteria. Having different sources (e.g.,
peers and teacher) provide data for comparison helps students
develop accurate self- evaluations. Discussion regarding
differences in data can prove most helpful. STAGE 4- Help students
develop productive goals and action plans. The most difficult part
of teaching students how to evaluate their work consists of
designing ways to provide support for students as they use
self-evaluative data to set new goals and levels of effort. Without
teacher help, students may be uncertain whether they have attained
their goals. Teachers can also help students connect particular
levels of achievement to the learning strategies they adopted and
the effort they expended. Finally, teachers can help students
develop viable action plans in which feasible goals are
operationalized as a set of specific action intentions.