Designing a School-Assessed Task Under Constraint
A teacher must design a school-assessed interactive task worth 20% of the internal mark for a class of 22 background-speaker students. Constraints: the task must be completable within four 50-minute lessons; it must generate individual evidence even though students work in pairs; the school has only one recording device, so only one pair can be recorded at a time; and the faculty requires at least two sources of evidence per student for each criterion. The teacher's draft plan is: students research a topic in pairs, prepare a poster, and present it to the class, with the teacher marking the presentation live. A colleague warns that live marking of 11 presentations in two lessons will produce rushed, unreliable judgements, and that the poster will dominate the students' effort while the Indonesian interaction is barely assessed.
1. Identify the design flaws in the draft plan and explain how each undermines valid assessment.
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There are three main flaws. First, live marking of 11 presentations in two lessons gives each presentation roughly 8–9 minutes including transitions, so the teacher's attention is divided and notes will be thin - this undermines reliability, because the mark depends on the teacher's memory and mood rather than recorded evidence. Second, the poster dominates preparation time, so students spend most of the four lessons on visual design rather than on Indonesian interaction; the task then measures poster-making more than language, which is a construct validity problem. Third, marking the presentation live gives only one source of evidence per criterion, breaching the faculty's two-source requirement, and a single live performance is a fragile sample. A fourth, subtler flaw is that pair work without individual accountability allows one student to carry the interaction while the other contributes little, so the mark may not reflect individual achievement. The colleague's warning is correct: the plan is feasible on paper but produces weak evidence.
2. Propose a revised design that meets the constraints and explain how it produces two sources of evidence per student.
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A workable revision keeps the four lessons but shifts the weight from product to interaction. Lessons 1–2: pairs research a topic and prepare brief notes in Indonesian (not a poster), with a short individual planning log submitted at the end of lesson 2 - this is evidence source one, showing preparation and language planning. Lessons 3–4: pairs hold a recorded 6-minute discussion, one pair at a time at the single device while other pairs rehearse or complete a written reflection; the recording is evidence source two, showing live interaction. The teacher uses the recording for the interaction criteria and the planning log for the language-range and content criteria, so each student has two sources. To ensure individual accountability, each student also submits a 100-word individual reflection in Indonesian on what they contributed and learned, which is a third source and helps resolve cases where one partner dominated. The single recording device is manageable because 11 pairs at 6 minutes each is 66 minutes, which fits across two lessons alongside rehearsal. The teacher should publish the rubric in advance and give students the recording schedule so no pair is surprised.
3. A student, Sari, is ill for the recorded lesson and misses her pair's recording. What options does the teacher have, and which is most defensible?
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The teacher has several options, and the choice should be governed by whether each produces valid evidence of the same criteria. Option one: Sari records with a different partner later, using the same topic and a comparable prompt - this is the most defensible if a comparable partner and time can be found, because it assesses the same construct under similar conditions. Option two: Sari completes an individual oral with the teacher on the same topic - defensible, though it changes the interactional conditions, so the teacher should note the difference and mark only the criteria that the individual format can evidence. Option three: the teacher uses Sari's planning log and reflection alone - weakest, because these do not evidence live interaction, and awarding interaction marks on them would be invalid. Option four: extrapolating from her classroom performance - not defensible as formal evidence. The teacher should also check the school's policy on missed assessment, which may require documentation and may set a deadline. The most defensible path is option one, with option two as fallback, and a written record of the substitution and its rationale so the mark can be defended if queried.