Seminar reflection 🐟

Since I have added a 🐟 in the title. It is now destined to dominate this blog 🐟

🐟🐟🐟

In today’s class we had another dreadful seminar. The only difference was Dr. Terret decided to try out a peculiar way of hosting it: four groups with four students leaders as they host the seminar whilst also MARKING everyone. 🐟

Surprisingly I didn’t hate the idea after volunteering as a leader. This new way of seminar-ing actually has a lot of benefits 🐟. For instance, students had chances to speak more, when in normal seminars they had to fight (verbally and maybe physically) just to answer the question. Many of the introverted ones spoke up more as well since they are split into small groups and won’t feel too pressured. I would say it was a rather successful new attempt at a new way of hosting seminars. 🐟

The cons however, are mostly gathered at the scoring. Usually it’s Dr. Terret who marks everyone. They are accurate, and everyone trusts him. However, this time it was the student leaders who marked everyone. This opens up many dangerous possibilities: quality of speeches being downgraded or upgraded, leaders cheating and giving friends/themselves high scores etc. I’m not saying our leaders are not trustworthy (you can absolutely trust me 🐟), I’m simply stating how it’s a bit 🐟risky🐟 for students to mark the entire seminar as it could lead to potential misinterpretation, which might then affect our SA score since we now have this SA portfolio… Maybe the class could choose someone they trust the most or Dr. Terret could linger around each group and make sure the scorings are correct.

I liked this new way, and would be happy if it’s introduced more often in future classes. It would be best if we could discuss about the scoring in class more… 🐟🐟🐟

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Comments (1)

  1. Nice fish emoji motif – but why the fish? Does it symbolise anything? Some students enjoy touching fish 🙄

    Thanks for being so quick to share this reflection, it’ll be really useful for others to see this insightful critical evaluation 🙂

    I’ll share the results in class. Everybody certainly spoke more, which is great at the introverted end, but means there isn’t much variation in scores at the top end  There were some inconsistencies in the scoring but it doesn’t seem to have disadvantaged anybody. We can discuss this in class once everybody has finished their reflections.

    One of the benefits of a portfolio assessment within the MYP guidelines is that it really makes these kinds of student reflections meaningful because it opens the door to negotiation on the assessment method itself 🙂