“Transition Pedagogy for 1st Year University Students involving Subject Outline and Rubrics”
Successfully dealing with the methodology of transition into university for higher studies includes recognizing that students in all their differing qualities come to the institute to learn and that the university is able to keep them, as well as for creating environments where dynamic learning can occur. Curriculum development grasping these perspectives underpinned by a constructivist theory gives a fruitful methodology to transition. Current study is focused on the importance of explaining the rubrics and course outline to the first year international students. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of outline and rubric on the performance of the first year international students from the transition pedagogy perspective. International students in Singapore come from different countries and because of the difference in medium of studies, style of teaching, assessment settings and so forth, these students face a lot of problems at the first year of their higher education. The transition pedagogy enables the institute to provide the international students of their first year experience, a conducive environment. This study will delve into whether or not rubrics and subject outlines are plausible and therefore easily understandable to students and explore how explaining the rubric and subject outline affects the performance of international students from the transition pedagogy perspective.
A rubric facilitates rating student’s performance in the areas of curriculum (subjects or topics) that are complex and subjective; in transition pedagogy it can prove itself a valuable tool. The rubric matrix explained as a list of all the specific and fundamental criteria for assessing learning, knowledge and competence achieved by the student in a particular task or subject (Chang, Tseng & Liang, 2013). To that end establishes a scale (levels) of the quality of the various criteria by which a student can develop an objective, competition, content or any other task that is performed in the learning process.
Usually a rubric is designed in a way that the student can be evaluated on an objective and performance (Angeli, 2013). At the same time it allows the teacher to specify clearly what is expected out of the student and the criteria with which a student will qualify a previously established goal, a job, a presentation or a written report for a specific course or topic. In the new paradigm of education rubrics are being used to give a more authentic and real traditional qualification criteria expressed in numbers or letters value.
Accordingly a rubric is used to determine how the student is learning, and in that sense can be considered as a tool for formative assessment, when it becomes an integral part of the learning process (Sydnor et.al, 2014). This is accomplished in the situations, when students are involved in the assessment process of their own work (self assessment) or the work of their peers.
Singapore is one of the best locations for the international students to study. But as the students from different parts of the world for higher education they face many problems (Catelli et.al, 2011). Since international students have diversified cultural values and they are from different educational backgrounds, they do not have similar level of knowledge as other students in class. The first language of most of the international students from Asia is not English. There has been always a critical problem to make the first year students understand about the grading criteria. It has been observed that the international students especially in first year of higher studies face many problems just due to the lack of communication with the teacher and lack of information regarding the university criteria for assessing the performance (Filsecker & Hickey, 2014).
This problem is specifically faced by the first year international students as they are fresh in universities and have lack of information and as they start studying, by the time they understand different policies and procedures. Since, these problems are well known in universities, which is why solutions are provided through the transition pedagogy that provides a friendly and conducive educational environment to the first year international students. Curriculum development is the foremost tool of transition pedagogy that makes the first year experience of the international students in foreign universities, better. A rubric that is a comprehensive guide on grading criteria, learning objectives and assessment criteria is an effective tool to make the international students to grasp the knowledge about the courses and assessment criteria in a better way (Chang, Tseng & Liang, 2013).
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of the explaining the assessment rubric and subject outline to the first year international students on their performance from the perspective of transition pedagogy. The present study elaborates how these tools can positively affect the international student’s performance by providing them more comprehensive knowledge and their targets that need to be achieved right after the completion of a particular course or subject besides the curriculum development under transition pedagogy. According to the purpose of this study following research questions have been developed:
The study addressed the following questions:
- How do performance-based evaluation techniques influence the progress of an International student and add value in transition pedagogy?
- What is the relationship between rubric and students performance?
- How can each of the following evaluation tools be effectively used or adapted to assess benefits:
- Instructor Rubric
- Scoring Rubric
- Subject Outline
These three questions will guide the research design and data analysis. For the most part, causal comparison links between students’ performance and explaining the course outline and assessment rubric to first year international students from the perspective of transition pedagogy. By designing, implementing and evaluating the results from these three questions, the research will provide a monitoring effect on the learning and performance of International students. I also intend to provide a more elaborate assessment tool to measure the educational performance of first year International students.
Transition Pedagogy
Transition pedagogy is a guiding philosophy for intentional first year curriculum design and support that carefully scaffolds and mediates the first year learning experience for contemporary heterogeneous cohorts (Kift & Nelson, 2010).
Assessment
For the purposes of this research, assessment is defined as: a system that is deliberately designed to teach by revealing to First year International students authentic tasks; the system should provide rich and useful reciprocal feedback (McNeal, 2014).
Rubric
For the purposes of this research, rubric is defined as: a printed set of guidelines that distinguishes performances or products of different quality. It has descriptors that define what to look for at each level of quality and indicators providing specific examples of things to look for in work (Liao & Hsu, 2014).
Performance-Based Education
For the purposes of this research, performance-based is defined as: the encompassing of new trends to assess active learning using projects, journals, portfolios, exhibitions based on high expectations and standards (Barrett et.al, 2014).
Feedback
For the purposes of this research, feedback is defined as: information that is transferred between two parties for the purposes of improvement and provides the performer with direct usable insights into current performance (Baird, 2014).
Learning Outcome
For the purposes of this research, learning outcome is defined as: a goal statement specifying a desired knowledge, skills/processes, and attitudes to be developed as a result of educational experiences (Sydnor et.al, 2014).
Self-Reported Survey
For the purposes of this research, self-reported survey is defined as: a type of assessment in which a First year International student self reports his/her feelings, attitudes, and knowledge about certain products or processes (Saye & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative (SSIRC), 2013).
Importance & Advantages of Rubric
The main purpose of a rubric is to pre define the performance evaluation criteria of a student. According to Panadero, Tapia & Huertas (2012), if it is assumed that the evaluation’s main purpose is to provide information on the different stages of student learning, this tool offers distinct advantages such as:
- It is powerful to the teacher and to evaluate students performance specifically to a course
- It promotes healthy learning expectations since it clarifies what the goals of the teacher and how students can achieve these goals
- It focuses on the teacher to specifically determine the criteria by which a teacher will measure and document student progress
- It allows the teacher to qualitatively describe the different levels of achievement that the student must meet
- It allows students to meet the rating criteria to be evaluated
- It clarifies the student what are the criteria that should be used to evaluate their work and that of their peers
- It allows students to evaluate and make a final check of their work before submitting it to the teacher
- The student clearly indicates the areas in which he has shortcomings and lack of knowledge with the master plan to implement corrective
- It provides the teacher feedback on the effectiveness of the teaching process used
- It provides power retro students about their strengths and weaknesses in the areas that need improvement
- It reduces subjectivity in the evaluation of the performance
- It promotes accountability in students as well as in teachers
- It helps to keep the target and achievements centered learning and set performance standards for the student work.
- It provides specific criteria to measure and document student progress
- It is easy to use and explain the complete outline and learning objectives to students
Types of Rubric
There are two major types of rubric that are discussed below:
Comprehensive Rubric
In the Comprehensive rubric, teacher evaluates the entire process and performance without judging separately the parts that compose it. According to Panadero, Alonso-Tapia & Reche (2013), the comprehensive matrices are used regularly when small errors are acceptable in any part of the process, but they alter the quality of the final product. This type of rubric is more appropriate when performing activities that require the student to produce a response without necessarily having a single correct answer. The goal of the works or performances that are scored in this way focus on quality, domain, or general understanding of both the specific content and skills assessment that includes a one-dimensional process (Chang, Tseng & Liang, 2013). The use of Comprehensive Rubric Assessment is faster as the entire work of student is analyzed and marked without marking different parts of student’s work. This is largely because the teacher should read or review the assignment and student performance once, in order to have a general idea of what students could achieve (Sydnor et.al, 2014). Since in this case what is sought is the general assessment almost always used when the purpose of summative assessment is by its nature. With this type of valuation can be very little feedback to the student.
Analytical Rubric
In Analytic rubric, teachers initially evaluate separately the different parts of the rubric and performance and then sum these scores to obtain a total score. According to Filsecker & Hickey (2014), analytical rubrics are preferred when a much focused response requested in the performance, that is, for situations in which there are at most two valid answers and creativity is not important in the response. As mentioned above, in this case the rating process is slower, especially because individually evaluated different skills or characteristics that require the teacher examine the assignment and report several times. So both its development and its implementation require time (Catelli et.al, 2011). It is noticeable that other than the advantage of using arrays of analytical review, the amount of feedback provided to the student and the teacher is very significant and huge. According to Chang, Tseng & Liang (2013), students receive feedback on each of the aspects or characteristics evaluated, which does not happen with the comprehensive approach. This makes it possible to create a profile of the specific strengths and weaknesses of each student in order to establish a course of action to improve later. That is why an analytical rubric matrix promotes formative assessment.
Development of a Rubric
According to Sydnor et.al (2014), there are several ways to make an effective rubric; however, all rubrics include some common features that are:
- Find a good model and identify the characteristics that define a good assignment, report or course. Allow students to become familiar with it.
- Thoroughly check the contents or unit being studied.
- Establish clearly within that area or unit one (a) objective (s), performance (s), behavior (s), jurisdiction (s) or activity (ies) in which it will focus. Determine what to evaluate.
- Describe as clearly as possible, the specific performance criteria to be used to carry out the assessment of those areas. These should allow for how much the student has learned the subject or course that a teacher teaches.
- Design a quality scale to qualify them, namely, set performance levels that can reach the student. These can range for example, from poor to excellent.
- Review what has resulted in the array to make sure nothing is missing
- Practice model or matrix.
Importance of Subject Outline
The subject outline is yet another toll to make the students aware of their entire course and comprehensive view of the topics to be covered in a particular subject or course. The subject outline tells students what are the main topics so that they can plan which topic to focus according to its weightage in assessment rubric (Angeli, 2013). It also enables a student to focus on weak points. According to Panadero, Alonso-Tapia & Reche (2013), overall the subject outline provides a holistic view of all the key material and topic that are covered under a particular course, which enables the student to plan and manage their lecture and focus on the weak points.
For this research, the strategy that has been adopted is quantitative and qualitative strategy. The researcher will design a questionnaire with the close ended questions and will keep reflective journals as well. Through the quantitative strategy, the researcher will collect the primary data from the participants. For choosing the participants the random sampling method will be adopted. Probability sampling will be carried out in which all the First year International students will have equal chance to participate in this research. Hundred First year International students will be chosen through random sampling method. The sample size has been determined by using online sample size calculator taking confidence interval of 10% at confidence level of 95% keeping population to infinity as it is unknown.
The primary data collected through close ended questionnaire will be analyzed by using the SPSS. The quantitative data will be analyzed through correlation and following regression equation:
Performance of First Year International Student= a +b1 (explaining the course outline) +b2 (explaining the rubric)
The primary purpose of this research is to study previously un-addressed issues regarding the educational development assessment of learning programs of transition pedagogy philosophy. This study will go beyond the limited scope of previous studies by researching learning outcomes in a more methodologically comprehensive way. Researchers Kift & Nelson (2010) focused on international student’s assessment in general perspective and curriculum development. Similarly study by Guisard et.al (2012) is focused on the curriculum development and integrated course approach to provide the international students a good First Year Experience (FYE). Study by Kift (2009) is based on the fellowship grant to the first year international students.
This research being unique in its own way, will focus on how the rubric and subject outlines can assist the international students in understanding the overall goals of the course and marking criteria and provide a better FYE to international students. First year students of higher education are the year in which students have to adjust themselves in the entire new environment. The current study aims to focus the First year International students and their educational performance through examining the effectiveness of rubric and subject outlines from the transition pedagogy perspective, which makes them understand the whole process of assessment and evaluation with the overall subject requirements and thorough learning objectives of every subject.
Previous researches lack in focusing on the importance of explaining the subject outlines and rubrics to first year international students but the current study will cover up this part and the quantitative strategy will enable the researcher to analyze the research on the statistical outcomes. In a nut shell, the current study attempts to analyze the effectiveness of rubric and subject outlines for international students in higher education.
| Action Plan | Schedule | |||||||||||
| May / June, 2016 | June, 2017 | July, 2018 | ||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| Submission and Approval of Proposal | ||||||||||||
| C2: Literature Review | ||||||||||||
| C3: Methodology | ||||||||||||
| Data Collection | ||||||||||||
| C4: Findings | ||||||||||||
| C5: Analysis | ||||||||||||
| C6: Conclusions and Recommendations | ||||||||||||
| C1: Introduction | ||||||||||||
| Draft Dissertation | ||||||||||||
| References | ||||||||||||
| Final Dissertation | ||||||||||||
| Binding & Submission | ||||||||||||
Angeli, C. (2013). Examining the effects of field dependence–independence on learners’ problem-solving performance and interaction with a computer modeling tool: Implications for the design of joint cognitive systems. Computers & Education, 62, 221-230.
Baird, J. A. (2014). Assessment and attitude. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 21(2).
Barrett, M. E., Swan, A. B., Mamikonian, A., Ghajoyan, I., Kramarova, O., & Youmans, R. J. (2014). Technology in Note Taking and Assessment: The Effects of Congruence on Student Performance. International Journal of Instruction, 7(1).
Catelli, L., Carlino, J., Jackson, V., & Petraglia, G. (2011). A PDS Partnership Goes International: Phase I of an American-Slovenian Collaborative Research Project. Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly, 5(4), 394-411.
Chang, C. C., Tseng, K. H., & Liang, C. (2013). Is Reflection Performance Correlated to the Learning Effect in a Web-Based Portfolio Assessment Environment for Middle School Students?. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 1-10.
Duncan, K., Kenworthy, A., & McNamara, R. (2012). The effect of synchronous and asynchronous participation on students’ performance in online accounting courses. Accounting Education, 21(4), 431-449.
Fastré, G. M., van der Klink, M. R., Sluijsmans, D., & van Merriënboer, J. J. (2012). Drawing students’ attention to relevant assessment criteria: Effects on self-assessment skills and performance. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 64(2), 185-198.
Filsecker, M., & Hickey, D. T. (2014). A multilevel analysis of the effects of external rewards on elementary students’ motivation, engagement and learning in an educational game. Computers & Education, 75, 136-148.
Guisard, Y., Hunter, C., Behrendt, K., Acheson, R., Bone, Z., Mills, P., … & Wheatley, W. (2012), Seeking new horizons for student transition: an integrated course approach. Retrieved from http://fyhe.com.au/past_papers/papers12/Papers/11C.pdf
Hewitt, M. P. (2011). The impact of self-evaluation instruction on student self-evaluation, music performance, and self-evaluation accuracy. Journal of Research in Music Education, 59(1), 6-20.
Kift, S. (2009). Articulating a transition pedagogy to scaffold and to enhance the first year student learning experience in Australian higher education: Final report for ALTC senior fellowship program. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
Kift, S. (2009, October). A transition pedagogy for first year curriculum design and renewal. In FYE Curriculum Design Symposium.
Kift, S. M. (2008). The next, great first year challenge: Sustaining, coordinating and embedding coherent institution–wide approaches to enact the FYE as” everybody’s business”.
Kift, S. M., Nelson, K. J., & Clarke, J. A. (2010). Transition pedagogy: a third generation approach to FYE: a case study of policy and practice for the higher education sector. The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 1(1), 1-20.
Liao, H. C., & Hsu, L. (2014). Using an Analytical Rubric to Improve the Writing of EFL College Students. Asian EFL Journal, 16(1).
McNeal Jr, R. B. (2014). Parent involvement and student performance: the influence of school context. Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 1-15.
Milanowski, A. (2011). Strategic measures of teacher performance. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(7), 19-25.
Osler, J. E., & Russell, S. (2013). An Investigation On The Impact Of The Socio-Psychological Effects Of Teacher Disposition On The Academic Performance Of Students In A Diversely Populated Elementary School. Journal on Educational Psychology, 7(1).
Panadero, E., & Romero, M. (2014). To rubric or not to rubric? The effects of self-assessment on self-regulation, performance and self-efficacy. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 21(2), 133-148.
Panadero, E., Alonso-Tapia, J., & Reche, E. (2013). Rubrics vs. self-assessment scripts effect on self-regulation, performance and self-efficacy in pre-service teachers. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 39(3), 125-132.
Panadero, E., Romero, M., & Strijbos, J. W. (2013). The impact of a rubric and friendship on peer assessment: Effects on construct validity, performance, and perceptions of fairness and comfort. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 39(4), 195-203.
Panadero, E., Tapia, J. A., & Huertas, J. A. (2012). Rubrics and self-assessment scripts effects on self-regulation, learning and self-efficacy in secondary education. Learning and individual differences, 22(6), 806-813.
Reddy, Y. M., & Andrade, H. (2010). A review of rubric use in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(4), 435-448.
Saye, J., & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative (SSIRC). (2013). Authentic pedagogy: Its presence in social studies classrooms and relationship to student performance on state-mandated tests. Theory & Research in Social Education, 41(1), 89-132.
Sydnor, S., Sass, M. S. M., Adeola, M., & Snuggs, T. (2014). Qualitative Analysis Of Multidisciplinary College Students In An International Alternative Break Course. The Online Journal of Quality in Higher Education, 27.
