I love the flexibility in Moodle. Usually, I can find a way to provide an experience for learners that meets our needs. Sometimes, these could be improved visually, but, usually, I can find a way.

Except.

I’m still not finding a way for students to do self-assessment cleanly. The idea here is that self-assessment is a powerful activity. Having students self-assess is just good pedagogy. Being able to do this through Moodle would be fantastic.

I have tried a variety of methods.

Quiz

Ultimately, this is the winner so far. The teacher creates a quiz with the rubric as the questions. This allows for a grade to be derived. The student can easily see his grade and his assessment. However, this certainly doesn’t look or feel like a rubric. This can also be visually quite lengthy.

Assignment

This is my second-place finisher. I can get incredibly close with Assignment. The only caveat is that students can not be in any groups. Here is the process:

Course must be set to “Separate Groups”

This is where the caveat of students can only be in one group comes in. If students are in multiple groups (e.g. they are in a first-hour group, and a self-assessment group), they will see the results of everyone in all of those groups. Thus, students would be able to see all of first hour. To combat this, one could make a class just for self-assessment.

Create an Assignment.

• Give it a name.
• Uncheck all Submission types
• Uncheck all Feedback types
• Set grading to Rubric

Locally assigned roles

Adjust the Locally assigned roles for this assignment only. Make each student a Non-editing teacher.

Adjust permissions

Make sure that students can NOT “Access all groups”

Questionnaire

Again, close with this one, but two issues come up:

• No “score”
• Groups remain an issue: students can only be in one group.

Database

This can be pretty. It is easy to limit to one student. However, no total score is generated.

Workshop

Workshop is geared for peer assessment. However, it is geared for the whole class. Part of the Workshop system is that the entire class moves from one phase to the next. There are five phases:

1. Setup
2. Submission
3. Assessment
4. Grading evaluation
5. Closed

The entire class moves from one phase to the next. Additionally, you can restrict the activity by Group. However, this means that you would need to create the Workshop Activity, with all the settings and then Duplicate the activity times the number of students. So, if you had 98 students, you would need to Duplicate the activity 97 times. Additionally, you would need to reset the Group on all 97 of those duplicates. (Now you can automatically switch from the Submission to Assessment phase – which saves a ton of steps).

So, that’s a quick overview of our goal of having students self-assess. There doesn’t appear to be a simple way to make this happen.

While I’m working on a full write up, I thought that I’d share a Moodle opportunity with you. Elementary teachers seem to spend a good bit of time on spelling words and tests. I thought that this could be streamlined.

Basically, this involves creating a gapfill quiz question (actually, as many questions as you need). Record the spelling word by reading it in the question text area (use the microphone button to record). Enter the letters of the spelling word in the Question text area (each letter goes between a square bracket), paste the entire alphabet in Distractors area (copy and paste the string below:) a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,o,n,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z

Duplicate the question, re-record the new word, replace the new letters for the new spelling word (between the square brackets: [ ] ) in the question text area.

*Note that I created additional blank spots by typing the opening square bracket [ and the close square bracket ] with nothing between them – if you add a space, students would need to type that space.

I have a full write up is currently in development.

Whoo Hoo! I’ve been awarded the “Particularly Helpful Moodler Badge”. It is an honor to help those in the Moodle Community. It’s also quite a great feeling to be recognized by the Moodle Community.