re:Learnings

Rubrics. You've got a matrix of criteria and standards and descriptors. I've never been satisfied with the labels given to standards. Most rubrics use either "HD, D, C, P, F" or "Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Unsatisfactory" or some variation. To my way of thinking that's: 1. It's discouraging judgement - not actual meaningful feedback - working against belonging and the spirit of ungraded assessment. 2. It's what you actually give as the final mark. Today's Tom thinks that the best descriptors (high to low) for a 5-Standard rubric are: Outstanding - Thorough - Developed - Sound - Limited The terms that leapt out at me were "Thorough", "Sound" and "Limited". Thank you NSW Education Dept's example rubrics. While you might ascribe the same range of marks to these as ever, these terms feel like they best describe "levels of competence". Tomorrow's Tom might think differently, but...

Guiding academics through the long chains of common sense during course design and development makes using templates a mighty helpful and common strategy. Now, Learning Designers, as a tribe, are mighty capable in the digital space of creating media and learning resources such as templates. I've spent many an hour creating visually beautiful templates, with detailed instructions, lots of branding and fancy tricks. ...and failed miserably getting academics to use them. Ego is such a fragile thing. That's what I have had to do: let go of my own design ego and rethink my approach. As any UX designer will tell you: you must understand your user. In my case at university, academics aren't in media production day-in-day-out; they are constantly multitasking and time-poor. So when I give the fancy templates means they have to stop and figure out how to use the damn thing. That's where I fail with fancy. Every bit of extra metadata I ask the academic is yet ano...