Video-making had been increasingly adopted as a learning activity for students in Singapore, arguably with the availability of cheaper and more user-friendly video-editing software interfaces. With the learning activity typically actualizing into a video product, this has also made possible using student-generated videos as a form of summative assessment.
This presentation will discuss how teachers reflect on assessment considerations and how they think they have incorporated pedagogical purposes, stakes involved for students and its interpretations into their assessment designs of student-generated videos. It also highlights students’ concerns in undertaking and being assessed through video projects. This presentation aims to better inform assessment considerations in student-generated video projects as authentic assessment and help teachers design better informed lesson plans, formative assessment outputs and scoring rubrics for student-generated videos.
The methods deployed in this on-going study involves documentation analyses of selected modules taught in NUS High School, participant observations of three teachers, two teacher interviews and two student focus group discussion of five students per group. In Bloom’s digital taxonomy, video-making represents the highest skill-set of creating and allows the practice of 21st Century Competencies skills like communicating, collaborating, processing of information critically and inventively (Lightie, 2011).
Assessment design influences the rigour, equity of effort and technical mastery students need to demonstrate, especially in terms of their mastery of their 21st Century Competencies skills. Kearney and Schuck (2004) argued that video generation, as an integral part of student’s learning is relatively under-explored with few studies detailing the learning that occurs through the production of videos by students. Assessment considerations are similarly under-researched.
Studies like the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) Report had tried to show that teachers focused on the editing quality and subject content when facilitating video-making as a learning activity (Burden and Kuechel, 2004). Most current studies and even teacher workshops advocating video-making as an engaging learning activity for students in Singapore do not focus on assessment design of student-generated video projects.
Student-generated video projects can be considered an authentic assessment (also known as performance or alternative assessment), and includes a high degree of computer and film literacy that often consumes a lot of students’ time and energy. Assessment design is crucial in directing students’ efforts. It serves formative and summative assessment purposes and influences the extent of scaffolding teachers should provide for students while engaging them in deep learning (Chin and Brown, 2000).
