Moodle to Enhance Presentation Skills
Sergio Mazzarelli
[Abstract]
This article describes a successful attempt to combine the use of the European Language Portfolio with peer assessment by taking advantage of the Moodle Workshop module. The attempt was conducted at a Japanese university in two consecutive first-year EFL courses with the same enrolment. The students enrolled in these courses were required to deliver a total of five presentations. The article describes how the students used the Portfolio form entitled “My Next Language Learning Target” to focus on the presentation skills they needed to acquire, how they formulated evaluation criteria based on Portfolio can-do descriptors, how they evaluated the presentations by looking at video recordings of them uploaded to Moodle, and how the Moodle Workshop module made it possible to calculate grades and distribute feedback efficiently.
Advantages and disadvantages of the two grading strategies that were
tried, accumulative grading and grading by rubric, are highlighted. By
the end of the second course, the students had made remarkable
progress in both presentation skills and learner autonomy. The
combination of the Portfolio with peer assessment and Moodle seems the
most probable cause of this progress because it allowed the students to
reflect on their learning in a very effective way. The article concludes
that further study is necessary to confirm this hypothesis and to find the
best way to combine Portfolio and Moodle use. In particular, more
experimentation with Moodle grading strategies is required to
determine how to use them most effectively.
Introduction
During the 2014-2015 academic year, the writer taught two consecutive courses for first-year students in the English department of a Japanese womenʼs university. The courses aimed at improving the studentsʼ general English listening and speaking ability, with an emphasis on presentation skills. Classes met for 90 minutes twice a week for fifteen weeks each term.
The English department of the university required all new students to make use of an adapted version of the European Language Portfolio.
1The Portfolio, created by the Council of Europe, is a personal document in which learners record their language learning experiences (Council of Europe, 2011). It is designed to foster learner autonomy as it helps learners to assess their linguistic competence, set their learning targets, and reflect on their learning. Moreover, it allows learners to record significant learning and intercultural experiences as well as store examples of work that prove what they can do in the languages they are studying.
Because of this, the Portfolio is strongly associated with the concept of self-evaluation. However, it takes a long time for learners who are not used to self-evaluation to become able to rely exclusively on it.
Furthermore, educational institutions must adhere to validation standards that require external assessment of a studentʼs performance.
In practice, in most institutional contexts, teacher evaluation should be used alongside self-evaluation with the aim of helping learners develop their self-evaluation skills (Kostopoulu, 2010, p. 299).
This use of teacher evaluation may seem to be a denial of the very autonomy the Portfolio was designed to foster, but advances in the study of autonomy have led researchers to see it not as complete independence from teachers and institutions, but as the ability to make personal decisions within a social context that includes teachers and classmates (Benson, 2011, pp. 14-15). Thus, in classes that intend to foster autonomy there is a role not only for teacher evaluation but also peer evaluation.
Indeed, peer evaluation is often effectively combined with the Portfolio (Kostopoulu, 2010, pp. 300-301).
An example of how students and teachers can work together to
make the Portfolio work involves learning targets. The Portfolio includes
a form that students can use to set these targets. In theory, the targets
could be taken from checklists that are included in the Appendix to the Portfolio. These checklists contain validated can-do statements corresponding to the six proficiency levels of the CEFR: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. However, the statements are too general for class work to be based around them. Therefore, they need to be adapted and the best way to do that is through dialogue between teacher and students.
Moreover, as suggested by OʼDwyer (2011, pp. 10-12), students should participate in defining the criteria to judge whether the target was achieved and then use these criteria to evaluate their own and their classmatesʼ work.
Unfortunately, if the assignment to be evaluated is a live presentation and the students are not extremely proficient, peer evaluation is made more challenging by the fact that the evaluators are likely to find it impossible to pay attention to all evaluation criteria. This can be solved by video recording the presentations, but then there is the logistical challenge of distributing the videos.
This problem can be solved by using the Moodle learning management system. As it happens, all students in the English department at the university where this study was conducted used Moodle in a variety of classes. Moodle offers teachers a set of tools that enable them to use a password-protected website to, for example, distribute audio and video materials, collect and mark homework, administer tests and surveys, and hold forum discussions. One of Moodleʼs tools, the Workshop module, has been specifically designed to allow the peer evaluation of learnersʼ work.
This article describes how the writer took advantage of the Portfolio in conjunction with the Moodle Workshop module to blend self- evaluation, teacher evaluation, and peer evaluation in order to help students take control of their learning and develop better presentation skills.
Both courses had the same enrolment, consisting of thirteen students who aimed to reach the proficiency level designated as B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). The textbook
was (Chase,
2013). Some of the activities in the textbook are presentations. To fit the
goals and schedule of the courses, it was decided to assign three
presentations in the first term and two in the second term.
First-Term Activities
In the context described above, it seemed appropriate to begin with targets based on the following B1 spoken production descriptor contained in the Appendix to the Portfolio: “I can give a short and straightforward prepared presentation on a personal project or chosen literary work in a reasonably clear manner.”
2The idea was that by giving successful presentations on various topics the students would eventually reach, and feel they reached, the level described in the Appendix.
Of course, the descriptor in the Appendix needed to be adapted.
First of all, the specific topic of each planned presentation was used rather than the generic words “on a personal project or chosen literary work.” In addition, the word “short” was clarified by specifying the actual expected length of the presentation. Thus, for example, the target of the first presentation, based on the first unit of the textbook (Chase, 2013, p.
20) was, “I can give a straightforward prepared one-minute presentation about myself in a reasonably clear manner.” At the initial stage, there was not much elaboration on the meaning of clarity, but the students were reminded that one of the factors that result in clarity is good rapport with the audience and that this cannot be established if the presenter reads closely from a script.
With hindsight, the word “straightforward” in the B1 descriptor contained in the Appendix to the portfolio is probably meant to refer to the relative simplicity of the topic, and it is to be contrasted with the
“complex topic” specified in level C1. However, the writer and his students were not looking at that level when preparing the target, so they interpreted “straightforward” as an attribute of the presentation, i.e.
“easy to understand.” This may be redundant and not what the Portfolio descriptor is supposed to mean, but it must be admitted that the term
“straightforward” is ambiguous. Moreover, the adopted interpretation had the merit of emphasizing the need for students to make efforts to be understood, rather than the choice of an easy subject, which was not relevant as an appropriate subject for the assignment had already been chosen.
After the first presentation had been completed, the students
returned to the target form and completed the last field, which contains
the following header:
Review of learning progress on or near my target date: Have I achieved my target? In working toward my target have I learned anything new about (i) the target language (ii) language learning?
What am I going to do with what I have learned?
This is a very important step, but the language of the instructions was somewhat difficult for learners at this level of proficiency and experience, so it was explained to them that in this form field the issue
“How can I improve?” should be always addressed.
3Many students commented on their degree of success in speaking from notes, so it was decided to add wording to the next target that would emphasize the importance of glancing at notes instead of reading from them.
The students were then introduced to PowerPoint and instructed to use this piece of software to support all remaining presentations. For the second presentation, based on the second unit of the textbook (Chase, 2013, p. 40), they selected the following target: “I can make a three- minute straightforward PowerPoint presentation about a holiday, celebration, or other activity that makes me feel good. I can present in English with reasonable clarity and without reading (just looking at notes).”
4One week before the second presentation was due, the students brought their PowerPoint slides to a computer room and received oral feedback from the teacher. Three days before delivering their presentations, they also showed the teacher their scripts and received written feedback on those. This kind of close supervision was considered expedient because most students had not used PowerPoint before. In particular, it was feared that without advice the students might end up using the slides to provide a printed version of what they were saying as opposed to visual support for it, as Japanese learners often do. In the end, the presentations proved very satisfactory. As usual, the students filled the last field of the target form with reflections on how well they had done and how they could improve. They were also told they could put a printout of their presentation slides in the Portfolio section called
“Dossier” together with the other documents that they considered proof of what they could do in English.
Although the writerʼs ultimate goal was to get students to improve
their presentation skills by letting them formulate evaluation criteria
and evaluate themselves and each other, this needed to be introduced
gradually because the students were not used to it. Therefore, the first
two rounds of presentations were formally evaluated by the writer alone.
However, already after the second round, the students were asked to submit a short paragraph in which they chose their favourite presentation and gave reasons for their choice. Although the outcome was not used for assessment purposes, this exercise was intended as an important step in the process that would transform the students into evaluators. Since it was announced in advance, the students kept notes while the presentations were delivered so as to use them later to explain their choice.
The target for the third presentation, based on the third unit of the textbook (Chase, 2013, p. 60), was “I can give a reasonably clear and straightforward five-minute PowerPoint presentation about my past by speaking from notes (i.e. not reading from a script).”
After the topic of this presentation was introduced, it was announced that from then on the students would evaluate their own as well as each otherʼs presentations and that, to make this easier, all presentations would be video recorded.
Although it is generally accepted that in this kind of evaluation process is more important than reliability (Benson, 2011, p. 169), in a university context it was important to establish procedures that all stakeholders would perceive as fair and reliable. Thus, it was made clear that such self- and peer evaluation by the students would be combined with their teacherʼs evaluation so as to determine the final grade for each presentation.
A discussion was then held to decide the evaluation criteria. Since the wording chosen for the targets talked about a “reasonably clear and straightforward” presentation, the students were asked to pay particular attention to what makes a presentation clear and straightforward.
The students came up with seven evaluation criteria: eye contact and smile; volume and pronunciation; posture and gestures; fluency and intonation; content clarity and organization; content interest and length;
slide images and text. They decided to award a total maximum of 65 points, 10 for each category except posture and gestures, for which the highest grade was 5 points. They wrote such categories in the penultimate field of the target form, which contains the following header:
How shall I know whether or not I have achieved my target? For
example, can I take a test or set and correct a test myself? Or shall I
need to ask my teacher, another learner, or a native speaker to
assess me? Or can I depend entirely on my own judgment?
Until then, the students had answered the above questions by writing “Teacherʼs feedback” or other words to that effect. Now they wrote:
I will use a combination of my own, my teacherʼs, and my peersʼ judgment. My work will be judged according to criteria based on the CEFR and agreed upon in advance by my teacher, my classmates, and me.
Under these words they added the list of criteria agreed upon and the number of points assigned to each criterion.
The students then prepared their presentations over a period of several weeks. While they were doing so, an online assessment form with entries for each criterion was predisposed on Moodle using the Workshop module. The following instructions were provided at the top of the form:
Use the form below to assess your own and your classmatesʼ presentations. If you like, you can add comments to explain your grades. When evaluating others, make sure your comments are polite and constructive.
Try to be consistent. Donʼt be stricter with yourself than you are with others, for example.
You must include general feedback at the bottom of the form.
Remember that the portfolio goal was “I can give a reasonably clear and straightforward PowerPoint presentation about my past by speaking from notes (i.e. not reading from a script).” Did your classmates meet this goal? Please tell them what you liked about their presentation and where they can improve next time.
Three days before the presentations were due, the students brought their PowerPoint slides to a computer room and received oral feedback. This time, however, they did not have to bring their scripts to class in advance and received no feedback about them. On the appointed day, the presentations were video recorded and uploaded to the Moodle website.
5Online evaluations were begun in a computer lab and finished as
homework. In the lab, seating was arranged so that the students could not see each otherʼs screens. After all the evaluations had been entered, the Workshop module calculated the grades, which were displayed anonymously along with any comments the evaluators had added.
General feedback by students on entire presentations, although brief, contained some useful information and was worded constructively.
Criticisms were presented as suggestions to improve the presentations and many comments highlighted strong points as well as, or rather than, weaknesses. Among the most frequently mentioned topics were interest, slide images, eye contact, volume, pronunciation, and smile. When assessing their own presentations, the students added fewer comments than when assessing their classmatesʼ work, but again they made some insightful observations. In addition to providing general feedback, the evaluators also had the option of appending comments to the grades for each criterion, but few chose to do so.
Because the studentsʼ ranking of the presentations was not very different from the teacherʼs, it cannot be denied that they assessed each other conscientiously. Therefore, the brevity of comments was probably due to time pressure, lack of knowledge of suitable critical vocabulary, and a cultural reluctance to criticize other peopleʼs work.
On the whole, as a first attempt at self- and peer evaluation, this worked well. It is possible for a teacher to increase the weight of his or her evaluation if he or she finds a grade calculated by Moodle to be unsatisfactory, but this was not thought to be necessary as the final ranking of presentations appeared perfectly acceptable.
The studentsʼ grading strategy was consistent and their comments showed awareness of important issues. The most obvious limitation of such comments was that they often did not provide enough detail to correct the problems they described in general terms. Thus, a student may suggest that a classmate should practise her pronunciation, but without clarifying what sounds or words were problematic. However, it would have been unrealistic to expect learners to provide that kind of feedback. Actually, the fact that students at this level were unlikely to possess the skills to advise their peers on all issues was the main reason why the writer had included himself among the evaluators.
The Moodle Workshop module outputs two grades: one for the
work each student submits for evaluation, and the other for the same
studentʼs performance in assessing his or her peersʼ work. By default, the
first grade is out of 80 points and the second out of 20 points. However, in
this case settings for the first grade were modified so as to produce a grade out of 100 points for the presentations. This grade was then used to calculate final grades for the class according to the weighting specified in the syllabus.
The second grade, which rates the studentsʼ performance as evaluators, was set to be expressed out of 10 points, but it had no impact on final grades because the writer had not included it as a grade component in the syllabus. It was only used to provide the students with an estimate of the reliability of their evaluations and it appeared to work well throughout the year.
After the evaluation activity had been completed, as in all previous cases, the students were asked to fill in the last field of the target form in the Portfolio. Since the Portfolio is a personal document of the learner, it is not possible to provide ample quotations from the studentsʼ responses to these questions, but here is an example, for which permission has been obtained:
I made some grammatical mistakes in my screen and script. I didnʼt make a gesture. I sometimes made a slip of the tongue. Next time, I will speak English more fluently and decrease mistakes. In addition, I want to make gestures.
It should be noted that, in this and subsequent occasions, the students were given the option to copy an MP4 video file of their presentation onto a personal USB flash drive. The students were thus put in possession of a proof of their English proficiency at a certain moment in time. Although the Portfolio they had was a paper one and could not house the file but only the printed slides of the presentation, the flash drive could be considered an extension of it.
Finally, anonymous feedback was collected from the students through the Moodle Feedback module. They were asked to state how useful the evaluation activity had been. Their answers were as follows:
Not useful at all 0 A little useful 0
Useful 3
Very useful 9
Two weeks later, during the last class of the first semester course,
another question asked the students to say how useful the Portfolio had been. The answers were:
Not useful at all 0 Somewhat useful 1
Useful 7
Very useful 4
Given the strength of positive feelings towards both the Portfolio and the evaluation of presentations, it was decided to continue the same pattern of class activities in the second term, making only some changes to see whether the quality of the assessment could be improved.
Second-Term Activities
The topic of the fourth presentation, assigned in the second term and loosely based on a unit of the textbook (Chase 2013, pp. 81-100), was healthy food. This was more difficult than the topics of previous presentations in that it required some research, which the students were required to document. The target chosen was “I can give a reasonably clear and straightforward five-minute PowerPoint presentation about healthy food by speaking from notes.” The evaluation criteria were those that had been established by the students during the previous term. The recommended length was again five minutes. However, this time instead of asking everyone to evaluate everyone elseʼs presentations, it was decided that every student would be allocated five classmatesʼ presentations. By reducing the number of evaluations to be conducted by each student, it was hoped that she might be able to dedicate more time to composing feedback, hopefully appending comments to the grades for each criterion. A recommendation was issued to the students to try to do that.
As had been anticipated, the number of comments attached to the grades for each criterion increased remarkably, so that each student received an average of 28.3 out of a maximum possible number of 35.
However, close examination of the comments revealed that many
consisted of one or two words such as “Good” and “Very good” that did
not really add to the information contained in the numeric rating they
were supposed to complement. That is not to say that longer and more
helpful comments were absent, but the total amount of information
conveyed through them was not very different from what had previously been included in the general feedback at the end. In other words, on this occasion, the students often divided into various comments what they had previously included in a single overall comment. Therefore, there was no substantial difference in the quality of feedback. In most cases, the number of comments the students wrote about the grades they gave to their own presentations also increased, but again they were often very short, so that the quality of the self- assessment, although satisfactory, was not superior to the previous presentation.
On the other hand, grades calculated by Moodle for each presentation out of seven overall evaluations (by the student herself, her teacher, and five classmates) looked less satisfactory than those calculated out of 14 overall evaluations (by the student herself, her teacher, and twelve classmates) in the first term. This was remedied by modifying the weight of the teacherʼs evaluation so as to make it count double.
It is reasonable that the more evaluators there are the more reliable the grades will be. Therefore, in a small class, where the burden of assessing other studentsʼ work is not excessive, the best option seems to be asking everyone to assess everyone else. On the other hand, reducing the number of evaluators in the hope of getting more feedback from each one of them does not seem to pay, as there appears to be a plateau beyond which they are unlikely to go. Finally, for the students whose work is evaluated, receiving feedback from a larger number of people means that they are less likely to be dissatisfied if a few of them write little.
After they had filled in the last field of the target form, the students were asked to complete an anonymous three-question survey. All thirteen students answered it. Responses to the first question, “Did you like the online evaluation of presentations?” confirmed that this activity was very popular. They can be tabulated as follows:
Not at all 0
To a small degree 0
To a moderate degree 2
To a considerable degree 7
To a great degree 4
Responses to the second question, “Which kind of evaluation of presentations do you prefer?”, showed that the kind of evaluation adopted was widely appreciated, with only one student indicating a preference for an even higher level of autonomy. The responses were:
Presentations are evaluated by me,
my classmates, and my teacher． 12
Presentations are evaluated by me and my classmates． 1 Presentations are evaluated by me and my teacher． 0 Presentations are evaluated only by my classmates． 0 Presentations are evaluated only by my teacher． 0 Presentations are evaluated only by me． 0 Finally, Question 3 was “Please explain your answer to the previous question,” which some students interpreted as if it had been “Please explain your answer to the previous questions.” All responses were appreciative of the evaluation activity. Here are some examples:
I think the online evaluation is easy to hand in and to read the evaluation for my presentation. So I like it. Second, the evaluations from my friend and teacher are very helpful for improve my presentation skills. Of course evaluation for myself is very important, but objective opinion is more important. I hope improve my English skills with both of them.
I liked online evaluation, because I could listen my classmatesʼ and my presentation again, and it helped me to know what was the good and bad points in my presentation. I wanted to know the impression of my presentation from everyone as many as possible, so I think it should be evaluated not only by me but also my classmates and my teacher. I could get much information to improve myself, so I would like to make a better one next time for sure!
I want many people to evaluate my presentation because I want hear many opinions about my efforts. And it will make my next presentation much better than before.
I havenʼt any chance to listen my English pronunciations. So that
time was very valuable for me. I could find my bad points on my
presentation. And I think my classmate think so too!
I think the online evaluation of presentation is very good for everyone. I feel shy to show my presentation to others, but I can get more wonderful comments than things that my feeling. In addition, some people gave me strict evaluation, I was glad!!! It makes me happy that some people thought mine very well. Improving each other is one of the good ways to learn.
I think it is a good system to evaluate my presentation not only a teacher but also classmates. Most people gave me some comments in each section, but some people did not do so. Thatʼs why I did not understand why she gave me this score.
It was satisfying to see that the students had understood the merits of the evaluation activity and that, far from being discouraged by criticism, they were motivated by it to make every effort to improve their skills. In eighteen years of teaching in Japan, the writer had never seen a whole class pervaded by such collaborative spirit and could only attribute it to the influence of the Portfolio and peer evaluation.
The last of the comments quoted above showed some dissatisfaction with evaluations that were unclear because their authors did not add explanatory comments to them. Although this criticism was not voiced by anyone else, it was certainly well founded. As noted before, for at least some learners at the CEFR A2 level who aimed at reaching level B1, the task of writing feedback about each evaluation criterion seemed too demanding. To try to address the issue and make the evaluations more self-explanatory, the writer decided to experiment with a different grading strategy for the final presentation: grading by rubric.
The fifth and final presentation, on the benefits of art and music education, was based on the eighth chapter of the textbook (Chase, 2013, p. 160). This was a small-group presentation. All groups were pairs except one that had three members. The target chosen was “I can give a reasonably clear and straightforward group presentation about art and music education, speaking from notes for five minutes.” The specified length referred to each studentʼs individual contribution to the presentation, so the expected overall length of each presentation was either ten or fifteen minutes depending on the number of presenters.
The Workshop module was not designed to evaluate group work,
but it can be used to do that as long as each individual contribution can be clearly distinguished. To make sure that was the case, the students were asked to discuss the topic and then assign a specific subtopic to each group member.
As anticipated above, a change was made to the evaluation procedure by replacing the accumulative grading strategy with grading by rubric. To write the rubric, instead of grouping fourteen aspects of the presentation two by two into seven criteria, it was decided to list each aspect as a separate criterion. The resulting rubric looked like this:
Makes eye contact Smiles appropriately Uses appropriate gestures Posture is correct
Volume is appropriate Pronunciation is clear Speech is fluent
Intonation is appropriate Content is explained clearly Content is well organized
Content is interesting and on topic Slide images are appropriate Slide text is legible and appropriate Contributionʼs length in minutes
＜
Since a rubric with fourteen criteria may appear daunting to students, the descriptors were worded very simply. Moreover, the number of performance levels was kept to a minimum. For criteria with three ascending levels of performance, these were assigned 0, 6, or 10 points respectively, except for posture and gestures, where the levels were assigned 0, 3, and 5 points respectively. Finally, the length criterion had four levels, which were worth 0, 6, 8, and 10 points. Therefore, the maximum possible score was 130 points and the total weight of posture and gestures, at 10 points, was equivalent to what it had been under the previous grading system (as 65:5=130:10).
Moodle rubrics cannot contain feedback fields for each evaluation criterion. The general feedback field, however, can be used and it was decided to retain it so that the writer could use it to type detailed comments about all aspects of each presentation. The students were also instructed to enter helpful advice in it.
Because this was the first group presentation, the students were given the chance of showing the teacher their slides and script a week before and receive written feedback. Most of them chose to avail themselves of this opportunity.
The quality of this last round of presentations was such that all of them reached the level B1 spoken production target that the students had set themselves, although some presentations were considerably longer and/or more extensively researched than others.
6It is also notable that this occurred when, in the writerʼs opinion (corroborated by the studentsʼ TOEIC scores), about one-third of the students had yet to achieve overall B1 proficiency.
After the presentations were delivered in class and the videos uploaded to Moodle, the presentations were allocated for evaluation.
Every student evaluated herself and everyone else, including members of her own group. Letting members of the same group evaluate each other was a somewhat difficult decision to make, but the class atmosphere suggested that the students could be trusted to be objective, and a subsequent review of the evaluations confirmed that there had been no partiality.
The quality of the general feedback was good. As on previous occasions comments were brief but contained useful observations and suggestions.
The Moodle Workshop module allows teachers to perform trial
calculations before displaying the final grades to the students. On this
occasion, the calculations showed that the grade averages ranked the presentations reliably. However, they also showed that the least sophisticated presentations would receive grades that were deemed a little too low. This was probably due to the fact that the rubric only had three performance levels and Moodle requires that the lowest level should correspond to 0 points. The problem was solved by manually setting Moodle to ignore outlier scores when calculating averages.
The small number of participants in this study and the fact that there were only three rounds of presentations means that it is not possible to reach definite conclusions about the best choice of grading strategy for teachers using the Moodle Workshop module. Nevertheless, it must be reported that in a final questionnaire, 9 out of the 10 students who provided valid answers favored grading by rubric, on the grounds that it was easier to use for the evaluator and/or easier to understand for those who were evaluated. Only one student preferred accumulative grading, on the grounds that it required evaluators to think harder and provide more feedback.
With both grading strategies, as long as there was a sufficient number of evaluators, the average grades calculated by Moodle ranked the presentations satisfactorily.
7The main problem with accumulative grading is that the numeric grades are not self-explanatory. Therefore, this kind of grades should be accompanied by clarificatory comments, which lower-level learners may not be able to produce. With grading by rubric, this is not an issue because predefined descriptors are attached to the levels. However, a rubric may sometimes be difficult for English learners to use if the descriptors are too complex or too numerous.
Moreover, it must be remembered that Moodle always maps the lowest level of a rubric to 0 points, and this may at times result in excessively low grades if it is not possible to include more than three levels. In the writerʼs case, revising the rubric so that it contains four levels is certainly feasible, and he looks forward to doing that and conducting further studies in the future.
Conclusion
It is hoped that this paper has provided educators with insights into
the potential of the combination of the Portfolio, peer assessment, and
Moodle as a tool to increase studentsʼ motivation, proficiency, and
learning autonomy.
The writer was pleased that all students steadily improved their presentation skills during the academic year. Moreover, their responses to survey questions indicate that they now look forward to further challenges so as to achieve higher goals, i.e., they became more autonomous learners. The extent to which this remarkable progress was due to the combined use of the Portfolio and peer evaluation is impossible to ascertain without further investigation, but it seems likely that both these elements were essential. As for the importance of video recording and Moodle, it must be pointed out that without access to online recordings of the presentations the quality of evaluations conducted by the students would have been much lower. Moreover, although it is theoretically possible to carry out on paper the kind of evaluation described above, the process of collating answers and calculating grades would be very time-consuming and impractical for many teachers. As regards grading strategies, this paper has shown that both accumulative grading and grading by rubric can be successfully used. However, more research needs to be carried out to determine the most effective way to use these strategies.
Received January 31, 2015 Notes
1
The version of the Portfolio used at the university was prepared by modifying, with
permission, the produced by the Framework
and Language Portfolio Special Interest Group of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (FLP SIG, 2009). The only modification that is of interest to readers of this paper is explained in note 2 below. Except for minor capitalization, punctuation, font, and layout adjustments, the text of the target form remained faithful to the original (FLP SIG, 2009, p. 10). However, because this paper is written in English, the Japanese translation that accompanies the English text of the form has been silently omitted from quotations.
2
A similar descriptor in the was missing its
Japanese translation, so it was replaced with this descriptor from the CEFR-J (Tono, 2013), for which both English and Japanese versions were available.
3
Thanks to Andrew Gorringe for suggesting that this recommendation should be made to the students.
4
This target should probably have been rewritten as a single sentence.
5
For technical details on how to record presentations and prepare files suitable for
uploading to Moodle, see Mazzarelli (2014). The following Moodle versions were used: 2.6
in the first term and 2.7 in the second term.
6
A few presentations were much shorter than required by the assignment, but because CEFR descriptors talk about “short” presentations without specifying the length, this writer believes that on account of their organization and other qualities they did meet the criteria for level B1.
7
