TESL Ontario Webinar

Rubrics have become a commonly used and widely accepted assessment tool in education, particularly in Western contexts. However, we often don’t stop to think about why we actually use them and how we can maximize their effectiveness. This webinar will focus on three important questions:

Why bother to use rubrics at all?

• to harmonize assessment across multiple sections,
• to serve as a form of criteria to improve inter-rater reliability, and
• to provide clear and useful feedback for learners.

How can we design rubrics for various tasks?

• rubric design for speaking tasks,
• rubric design for writing tasks, and
• rubric design for participation.

How can we ensure that our rubrics are working effectively?

• parallel marking,
• feedback and revision, and
• practice with demo text from handout.

PRE-WEBINAR INSTRUCTIONS

To get the maximum benefit from this webinar, the presenters suggest that, before the webinar, you familiarize yourself with the content of the files found under "Event Files".

WEBINAR TYPE

General

CATEGORIES

Assessment

PARTICIPANT LEVEL

All levels

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Donna Pearce and Eldon Friesen are Program Development & Quality Assurance Coordinators for ESL Services at Brock University.

Donna also teaches pronunciation for the Goodman School of Business and is the writing mentor for the graduate program in Applied Linguistics/TESL. Her interests include quality assurance in education, innovative pedagogies in language learning, and plurilingualism in ESL instruction.

Eldon has held various teaching and program administration and development positions in Canada, Mexico, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. His interests include curriculum delivery, testing, assignment specifications, and rubrics.