Rubrics for Using VoiceThread in Your Course

A question I’ve heard a few times recently regarding VoiceThread is the availability of rubrics. Part of my research in this area almost always involves reaching out to Michelle Pacansky-Brock, educator and leading advocate in using web-based technologies. Specifically, she has been a leading adopter of VoiceThread since it’s release and is a great resource for me personally in this area. I asked her for her thoughts and she freely shared them as well as a great little sample rubric. Her response is so concise and well articulated, I’m sharing with all what she shared with me (there is absolutely no reason for me to even attempt to summarize it). Here you go:

“Sometimes faculty can feel bewildered about how to assess a collaborative activity but, really, it’s just as plain and simple as assessing anything else. It starts with a clear understanding of what we are expecting from student contributions. I find that usually when a professor is confused about how to assess an activity it’s because s/he isn’t clear about its purpose or how it aligns with the course learning objectives.

“I would encourage instructors to tie the activity back to Bloom’s and think about what objective(s) are being fulfilled through the activity. Much of my own VoiceThread use is to foster reflective discussion amongst my students, an important skill in developing one’s interpretive voice when learning about art and art history. I think it’s really helpful for both a professor and his/her students to develop a rubric for VoiceThread activities. 

For me, it’s important to have two layers of criteria in each VoiceThread I require students to participate in: “quantity” of comments and “quality” criteria for each comment. Quality relates to the outcomes that are being assessed: are the students demonstrating proficiency of a skill in a comment, contributing a unique viewpoint, etc”