Our Educational Technology Community (ETC) had a special guest presentation this past Friday. Dr. Amanda Helm, Assistant Professor in the Division of Business, demonstrated to our virtual participants how she uses Self-Graded Checklists in Blackboard, along with the adaptive release feature, to help students "grade" their work before they submit it.
Dr. Helm posts a quiz she has developed based on the instructions and rubrics she gives to students for each assignment. The students must complete this quiz before they are able to officially submit their assignment. When the student answers the quiz questions, they receive automatic feedback in order to improve their work before submitting, as well as an estimation of the letter grade they can expect to receive.
A variety of quiz questions are asked, depending on the project. They may be as simple as "How long is your single-spaced typed paper?" and "How many sources did you cite?" or more complex in nature, asking content questions which are dependent on the assignment.
To learn more, here is the guest link to the virtual presentation. It's recommended that you choose to watch the mp4 version:
Dr. Helm reports that her students are submitting better quality work by taking this 5 minute assessment before they can officially post their assignments. She also says that the students have told her that they make adjustments to their work after receiving the quiz results and that her students don't mind taking the 5 minute quiz before being able to submit their work.
Thank you Dr. Helm for sharing this great idea with us!