I did some searching to see whether I could actually use blogs, wikis, etc. for students to demonstrate the outcomes in VCE English (see comment below). I did some checking and found this lot in the VCAA assessment handbook:
Work completed outside classMost assessment tasks will be completed in class. This does not preclude students from completing work associated with the task/s outside class time, providing that the teacher can confirm that all work submitted for assessment is the student’s own. Students should be advised in advance as to the conditions under which tasks are to be completed and submitted.
Authentication
Teachers should have in place strategies for ensuring that work submitted for assessment is the student’s own. Where aspects of School-assessed Coursework tasks are completed outside class time teachers must monitor and maintain records of student’s work.The teacher may consider it appropriate to ask the student to demonstrate his/her understanding of the task at the time of submission of the work. If any part or all of the work cannot be authenticated, then the matter should be dealt with as a breach of rules.To reduce the possibility of authentication problems arising, or being difficult to resolve, the following strategies are useful:· Ensure that a significant amount of classroom time is spent on the task so that the teacher is familiar with each student’s work and can regularly monitor and discuss aspects of the work with the student.· Regularly rotate topics from year to year to ensure that students are unable to use student work from the previous year.· Where there is more than one class of a particular study in the school, early liaison between teachers on topics, cross-marking and sharing of draft student work enables earlier identification of possible authentication problems and the implementation of appropriate action. Teachers should develop assessment programs for Units 3 and 4 that:· include both formative assessments, for diagnostic or monitoring purposes, and summative assessments, for determining achievement that contributes to the final coursework score· include a variety of assessment tasks and conditions· provide an appropriate balance of short and extended taskstake into account the workload for students Assessment tasks should be completed mainly in class and within a limited timeframe.
Designing the assessment task
Teachers should develop an assessment task that allows the student to:
· create a text or texts appropriate to a chosen form, audience, purpose and context
· demonstrate an understanding of the ideas and/or arguments relevant to the chosen Context and presented in the selected text/s; and draw on these in the creation of own text/s
· review and edit written work for expressiveness, fluency and coherence
· discuss and analyse in writing, using appropriate metalanguage, choices made in regard to form, purpose, language, audience and context in the creation of own text/s
· have the opportunity to demonstrate the highest level of performance.
This leads me to believe that I can do this as long as I give students the same type of experience that they would normally undertake when sitting a SAC a more traditional way. This means that as long as they sign authentication records they could do some of their written pieces on a blog or wiki. I’d really like to try this and I think I’ll actually contact VCAA to triple check.
