Using New CEFR Mediation Scales for Assessment in Project-Based Courses by Maria McCormack, Frances Boyd, Carol Numrich and Brittany Ober

 This session discussed the CEFR mediation scales for assessment in project-based courses. 

The session begins with a definition of PBL which is "an instructional approach in which learners are faced with problems to solve or final project products to develop. The instructional focus is on collaboration and language tasks that support the development and production of the final project". The presenters then move on to discuss the importance of collaboration using the Richards and Rogers (1982) Framework which includes design, approach and procedure. 

The session goes in to show a great example of how to encourage students to use language within groupwork by sharing phrases which help students set goals in their groups, compare ways to achieve their goals, share ideas with the group and build on other people's ideas.

To achieve these goals, they used the mediation scales from the CEFR 2018 for backwards design of their students' communicative learning needs with curricular goals. From these scales, they create their student learning objectives for collaborative activities. 

Using these CEFR scales, they created the following student learning outcomes:

Then, the presenters share the complete student learning outcomes table for their designed courses. These include the speaking, writing and collaboration objectives using CEFR scales. Each of these objectives is also divided based on proficiency levels (C1, B2, B1).

 

To design these courses, they focused on two main approaches:

1) Killeen, 2018: Project-Based Learning for Creatives: the 1-2-3 Approach    

This approach includes three phases- inspiration in which students investigate a topic. Preparation in which students practice language aspects and production in which students create the project.

2) Lenz, 2018 and Rodriguez, 2019:  who stated that a PBL course should include intellectual challenge and accomplishment, authenticity, public product, collaboration, project management and reflection (Lenz, 2018) in addition to learner voice and choice (Rodriguez, 2019).

The presenters explain the characteristics of the students' final product for the course and their assessment for the collaborative aspect of the course:

Their lessons learned from the design and application process are summarized as:

• Expectations for collaborative tasks must be clearly stated
• there should be a balance between authenticity and individual language production in projects
• assessment of collaboration in group work is a difficult task when a teacher performs other roles such as class manager, content expert and error corrector.