Week 5 : PBL,Rubric,Alternative Assessment,and WebQuest

Week 5 readings were about  Project-Based Learning (PBL), Alternative Assessment and rubrics, WebQuests. After looking through the web course, I started to design the RubiStar, but then I got confused for almost 4 hours. At first it was quite easy and I felt so confident selecting the criteria for my first own rubric. Unfortunately, I could not upload my link to the rubric page in our group wiki as it had disappeared. However, My first two early -bird- colleagues, Juan and Bathiam, had uploaded theirs already, therefore I became worried and concerned. So, I clicked to view theirs and found that only the top parts of the rubrics were showing, while mine had disappeared together with my RubiStar account.  I then re-read the direction at  RubiStar Instructions on the web course, and discovered that I had to save the file as a permanent rubric so that it would be saved for one week. As a result, my Week 5 first post was my first rubric. I would like to give a very special thanks to Donna and the Webskills team for introducing us to this tool.  I believe this tool is very useful for teachers to use for grading their student’s work and assignments. and for students to enhance their learning. This is the first time I have learnt to create my own rubrics. To be honest, before learning the Webskills course,  I just used the rubrics in the text manual. I was surprised how the creator made this brilliant tool, and now I know how to create my own one.

Following with the readings about PBL on  http://www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=385.html-
“Less Teaching and More Learning” by Susan Gaer.  The author commented that using a project-based approach has helped motivate students to learn language for a purpose.  The methodology promotes building a community among the class members. The instruction in project-based learning is less direct than in a traditional class, and students develop language and literacy skills by working on a product that will exist beyond the classroom walls. The author concluded that there are three crucial elements to success. Firstly, The project must be geared to the population, next, the students must see value in a project, and finally,  be flexible to use outside of the classroom.  Furthermore, I had accessed  another websites for additional readings, for instance;  http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html ,  http://elearningfacultymodules.org/index.php/Project-Based_Learning , and also  http://pennstate.swsd.wikispaces.net/file/view/PBL-Primer-www_techlearning_com.pdf. Then I read about “What is Learner Autonomy and How can    It Be Fostered” on http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html. Then followed by the alternative assessment, which was prepared on the web course; http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/alternative.htm, http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/tannen01.html. When I finished reading those articles,     I moved on to  Zunal  and designed my first WebQuest about the recent Earthquake in Thailand. I then uploaded the picture at http://www.bangkokpost.com/multimedia/photo/408382/damage-from-the-chiang-rai-quake. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to make my WebQuest look more appealing. This was due to several readings I had to do, and the SWOT with all staff at my school was an important event for me to attend also. However, I worked hard to add some detail on my work, and then uploaded it to show my instructors that I could make my own WebQuests. Nevertheless, it is important to create the perfect WebQuest for extra credits on this task, therefore I must strive to achieve this goal. Moreover, it is wonderful to be introduced to this valuable tool, so I will carry on using it in the future. After reading the short introduction on the Week 5, and the prepared articles, I quickly realised that WebQuests is a form of PBL that follows a fairly specific pattern. And which the teacher can create the task statement and designates or furnishes the resources. The learners work in groups and have a specific product, while the teacher produces an evaluation in the form of a rubric. This rubric is for students to use as they are doing their project, and for teacher, as well as self-evaluation when it is finished. It is important to be careful when using WebQuests, since it will be my new tool to use in the classroom. This tool has the potential not only to solve the students problems, but also to encourage them to become more autonomous learners.

The first discussion set for yellow group by Donna and Kelly states, “How can rubrics, alternative assessment and project based learning encourage your students to become more autonomous learners?  according to this, all the Week 5 readings I had mentioned above seemed to be created directly to work well with autonomous learners.  Since the Project-based learning is known as the dynamic approach to teaching, which students explore real-world problems and challenges and simultaneously develop cross-curriculum skills while working in small collaborative groups, as it was identified at http://susangaer.com/studentprojects.  While alternative assessment methods work well in learner-centered classrooms, which are based on the idea that students can evaluate their own learning, and learn from the evaluation process . They are expected to participate actively with evaluating themselves and one another, however many students are not active for this in my school. The effective alternative assessment relies on observations that are recorded using checklists and rubrics.  A checklist simply provides an indication of whether a specific criterion, characteristic, or behavior is present, and a rubric provides a measure of quality of performance on the basis of established criteria. Rubrics are often used with benchmarks or samples that serve as standards against which student performance is judged- http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/alternative.htm. The teacher herself will create her lesson on WebQuest where students are given a task and provided with access to on-line resources to help them complete the task-http://www.tach-nology.com/tutorials/web-quests/.

With the reasons above, I think WebQuests, can help me encourage my students to become more autonomous learners. They can access the internet at the technology room or at home to study, and therefore do the tasks on their own. They can access the teacher's WebQuests and study carefully from Introduction, Task, Process,Resources, and Evaluation. The students have to study the rubric carefully and make sure they understand it well so that they know what they will be scored on before they manage to complete the tasks. 

When describing a new tool for solving my students' problem, I think WebQuests is the right device to use for me and my students. My students have poor listening and speaking skills, so they need to solve this by practicing outside of the classroom. I had sketched the lesson on WebQuests on Zunal already at http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=244046.  

Furthermore, I found that with 5 essential parts: introduction, task, process, resources, evaluation, and conclusion with guidance on each element makes WebQuests easy for a new user to follow and use. I think my students can access WebQuests easily too inside and outside of the classroom. They can do collaborative work and follow the instruction step by step, and they can assess themselves by using the rubrics prepared by their teacher. WebQuests may become the new technology tools for my final project if Donna does not introduce something more intresting. 

Yaowapa 

Thailand