CATESOL24

Rubrics help students do better work and make grading easier for teachers and fairer for students. This session will start with some background about how to create rubrics, including benefits and cautions. Next, information will be presented about the free rubrics website, Rubistar, which offers more support for teachers. Finally, using and adapting rubrics from ChatGPT will be demonstrated, with pluses and minuses. Participants are encouraged to ask questions and comment throughout.

Assessments in TESOL are not just tools for assessing student progress but are integral to effective teaching and learning. This session explores practical strategies to create more effective assessments by incorporating the six principles of effective assessment: validity, reliability, authenticity, practicality, positive washback, and equity. The session covers aligning assessments with objectives, using clear rubrics, providing meaningful feedback, and making the assessment process more equitable. By the end, educators, assessment designers, and administrators will gain strategies to create goal-aligned assessments, illustrated with real-world examples and success stories. This presentation is ideal for those seeking to refine their assessment practices.

Traditional writing assessment often focuses on a final product as compared to the developmental process that initially brought it to fruition (Hirvela,1999; Stern & Solomon, 2006). As a result, learners focus their attention on perfecting a final product rather than on the process of writing. Unsurprisingly, much instructor feedback addresses technical corrections while comments focused on quality and development of ideas, structure/organization, and cohesion are frequently deficient (Stern & Solomon, 2006). In this workshop, we offer social annotation as a more humanized learning and assessment process.

This study used a written interview format to ask several large language models (LLMs, specifically, Claude, Chat GPT, and Gemini) about their ability to write reading passages restricted to particular vocabulary lists, and with specific restrictions on text complexity. The presentation outlines the background of the study, particularly features that might be included in passage specifications, and provides options for setting specifications in a particular context and/or at a particular level of English proficiency. It outlines the various capabilities claimed by current versions of the LLMs that were interviewed.