My Results (Kim)

Results

In the pre-lesson on theme statements, completed with Catcher in the Rye, a rubric was applied to assess the students’ creation of themes. This is the same rubric as the one used for developing a theme statement during the implemented lesson (see Appendix A). After the pre-lesson, students were assessed based on their developed theme statement and based on their providing proper textual evidence for this theme statement (results in Appendix B).

Following this pre-lesson, before the implementation of the technology, students also individually self-assessed their contributions during the collaborative group work using a rubric (Appendix D). The results from the self-assessment, as well as observations made during the class, helped in the grading of students’ individual effort during the collaborative group process (results in appendix E).

Before the implementation of discussion boards, students completed a technology comfort pre-survey and a collaboration comfort pre-survey. On the technology comfort pre-survey, students first rated their comfort level with using the discussion boards based on an informative scale (see Appendix G). The results from this pre-assessment of student comfort with using this technology were then assessed (Appendix H). In rating their comfort level with collaborative group work, students placed themselves within the realm of one area of the comfort scale (Appendix J). Based on these options, the students self-rated their comfort with collaborative groups (Appendix K).

Following the implementation of discussion boards, students had created new theme statements for the current text, and were assessed based on the quality of these themes and their ability to support an alternative theme (Appendix C), using the same rubric from the pre-lesson on theme statements and their evidence (Appendix A).

Students also completed the post- technology comfort surveys (Appendix I) and collaborative group comfort surveys (Appendix L) after the implementation, which contained the same comfort scales as the pre-surveys (Appendices G and J).

Also, after the implementation of the technology, students self-assessed themselves in a collaborative group work rubric, the same rubric that was used in the pre-lesson, based on their individual contributions to the group. This information and observations of students during the lesson helped to determine their scores (results in Appendix F).

During the lesson, I heard one student ask her fellow group members to check another group’s progress on the discussion board to make sure they were doing the work correctly. In doing so, the student said, “We are exactly where we should be,” to which one of her peers responded, “I like that we can see what other people are doing to make sure we’re doing this right.”

Later, in speaking with a student about the discussion board, he said, “I didn’t get how to do a theme before, but now there’s all these examples, so the homeworks that ask for a theme will be a lot easier.” Then, a week later, when students were working on an exploratory paper that required the application of a theme, I polled the class to see who used the artifacts on the discussion board to help them develop their own themes and ideas. A little more than half the class (12/23 students) raised their hands, and one student who did not raise his hand said, “I need to check that later – I forgot about it.”