Seminar Assessment Using Google Forms

 In a previous post (Trio Seminar), I outlined the near impossibility of hearing everything said in a seminar format in which more than one voice is talking. And, it is often vitally important that I make this tradeoff because higher levels of student engagement are worth the added challenge of assessing a wide-spread and multi-directional conversation.

While I often place myself dead center of the trio seminar circle, recording excerpts of conversation, visually documenting participation, collecting anecdotal evidence, I have no way of knowing--at least during this segment of the seminar--what depth of understanding and the frequency and range of contributions an individual is bringing to the discussion.

Google Forms to the Rescue (Again!)

A brief version used to collect quick peer assessments.

Because my students have access to Chromebooks, I am able to have them help me assess seminar contributions via a Google form.

Prior to using the form for peer assessment purposes, we calibrate our thinking about what high levels of performance in a seminar look like.

What is not displayed in the image is the pull-down list of names I use to have students select the name of who is being assessed. You could simply have a Name? text field instead, but I found that student misspellings, make data sorting difficult. Madison becomes Madeson becomes Madyson becomes Maddisson. The pull down list standardizes the data sorting and is well worth the effort to type in all the names. (This takes me no more than five minutes per class (and is a great job for a TA), and once done can be used over and over by making a copy of the Google form for the next seminar.)

During the seminar, both the students and I use the form to assess student performance, evidence of preparation, etc. And, once the seminar is complete, the students self-assess using the same form.

At the completion of the seminar, I can calculate student scores (with the data that is automatically sent to a Google Sheet), and review comments and contributions, to determine a student's seminar grade.

 Depending on the seminar goals (and time I have to do this), I will use a Google add-on (Save as Doc) to select the comments and scores for each student so that I post the link to their green sheet, which gives them the full range of the peer and teacher and self assessments from which they can formulate goals for growth in the next seminar.

If you have any questions, I'd be glad to help. Just send me a note.

Thanks for reading!
Steve

Trio Seminar

One format that I've found to promote accountability as well as high levels of participation is the trio seminar. This one sort of came to me one day as I was struggling to get my senior English class to effectively-engage in the traditional whole-class seminar (you know, the one with everyone circled up and nervously starting at each other and dominated by three or four students!).

While I suspected that there were more students who had something of significance to contribute, they didn't have the courage to offer their ideas in this large circle, they were content to let others do the talking for them, or (and this one is most disheartening), they would--under pressure grade-wise to contribute something--offer a shallow observation that had most likely been floated ten or fifteen minutes before by another student.

So, one evening, I dreamed up this seating chart:

And here is how it works. All the tables are pushed against the classroom walls. Each of the squares represents a student chair. Each trio of chairs is numbered (Trio 1, Trio 2, Trio 3, etc.). The students walk in and find their name and trio number which I have projected on the screen. (A note on trio selections: sometimes they are randomly-selected, other times they are purposely-grouped.)

Depending on time of the year and goals for the seminar, either I or the students will generate discussion questions/topics. Students are numbered 1, 2, 3 in their trio groups, and they take turns leading three- to five-minute mini-discussions. I stand in the middle, clipboard in hand, and take notes as I listen in to the ten or eleven simultaneous conversations. While the seating chart above shows eight groupings, I've had as many as 14 in one of my larger classes.

The benefit of this simultaneous chatter is just that--at any given time, a third of the class is talking in a more intimate setting. They get a chance to test their ideas, build deeper understanding, learn from their trio partners--which helps not only helps them refine their thinking, thus improving the quality of their conversation, it emboldens them for the next, whole class round.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, all students turn their chairs so that we form a large whole-class circle and proceed in a more traditional Socratic seminar format. But, as I quickly discovered with that class of seniors, the level of engagement is immensely improved, as is the level of confidence, the contributions, and the number of contributors.

For these reasons and more, this is one of my favorite seminar formats.

For some thoughts on assessing the first segment when it is humanly impossible to hear everything, I have a few ideas to help. You can contact me or wait for an upcoming post on using Google forms for seminar data collection.

Thanks for reading,
Steve

For an idea about how to streamline seminar assessment, you might want to check out this post on using Google Docs for self-assessing, peer assessing, and teacher assessing seminars of any structure.