Students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the usability and usefulness of the first viewbrics-prototype: a methodology and online tool to formatively assess complex generic skills with video-enhanced rubrics (VER) in dutch secondary education

Abstract

Rubrics support students in learning complex generic (21st century) skills, as they provide textual descriptions of skills’ mastery levels with performance indicators for all constituent subskills. If students know their current and strived-for mastery level, they can better determine subsequent learning activities towards skills mastery. However, text-based rubrics have a limited capacity to support the formation of mental models of a complex skill. Video-enhanced rubrics (VER) with video modeling examples have the potential to improve and enrich mental model formation, feedback quality, and thus improve students’ performance. In the Viewbrics-project we therefore developed, through design-based research, a methodology for the formative assessment of complex skills with Video-Enhanced Rubrics (VER), precipitated in an online tool. This paper describes the features of the first prototype of this online tool and the results of a stakeholder evaluation of its perceived usefulness and usability, by means of a questionnaire and card-sorting exercise, with 7 teachers and 21 students of two secondary schools. The evaluation of this first prototype showed that both teachers and students evaluated the online tool and formative assessment methodology as handy, usable, helpful and feasible for learning complex skills, although some recommendations were made to further improve the design of the tool.