At the end of a week-long workshop about updating the journalism curriculum at Rhodes University, we discussed a few specific types of assignments and assessment.

1. CONCLUSIONS
Rhodes JMS Staff Workshop
9–13 June 2014

2. Where we started:
Skills in demand for digital journalism
1. Collaboration and participation
2. Aggregation and curation
3. Data analysis and data graphics (including maps)
4. Photos and video
5. Social media (sharing and mining)
6. Apps and other digital-only products
7. Audience research

3. Summary: Digital everywhere
• Learn multiple skills
• Think about story, not about medium (print, broadcast)
• Discourage silo mentality
• Encourage working in teams, peer teaching & learning,
collaboration among students and staff
• Carry ideas and skills through, from class to class, and
from year to year
• Move toward students working in public and taking
responsibility
• Integrate social media and critical thinking about social
media

4. ASSESSMENT
A few suggestions from my own experience with
marking blog posts, blog comments, and large classes
handing in frequent production assignments

5. Marking team projects
• Three- or four-student teams seem most effective
• Appoint a project leader for each team (if possible, each
student in the class should be a project leader once)
• Provide clear guidelines to project leaders
• Make clear at outset how team and individual marks (if
any) will be determined
• Best assessment aid: At end, provide an identical effort
breakdown questionnaire to all team members and
require them to fill it out (see next slide)
Team structure guidelines (link)

6. Effort breakdown questionnaire (partial)
Audio gathering
Team member 1 name ___________ Percent ________
Team member 2 name ___________ Percent ________
Team member 3 name ___________ Percent ________
Team member 4 name ___________ Percent ________
Total = 100
Audio editing
Team member 1 name ___________ Percent ________
Team member 2 name ___________ Percent ________
Team member 3 name ___________ Percent ________
Team member 4 name ___________ Percent ________
Total = 100
Each student writes breakdown for each task in the project

7. Further clarification
• The lecturer breaks down the tasks within the
assignment and lists them on the end-of-project
questionnaire.
• Each student receives the same printed or online
questionnaire for reporting on the division of labor.
• It’s completely fine if individual tasks were not shared
equally! That’s normal for teams.
• Each student writes percentage of work done for all
teammates AND for him/herself. (Total: 100% per task)
• By comparing all questionnaires from ONE team, the
lecturer gets an accurate picture of how the work was
divided; discrepancies point to issues that should be
discussed with the team in a face-to-face meeting.

8. Some group tips from Cory Armstrong
• Don’t go higher than 3 in a group or lower than 2. The
problem with 2 is that if one drops, a student is working
alone. More than 3 means that at least 1 student is not
doing his/her share.
• Require students to evaluate their teammates (tells a
lot about the dynamic). Make students explain in that
evaluation who was responsible for each task; if there are
holes in the project, you can pinpoint who fell down on the
job.
• Face to face. When I've had difficulty with groups, I've
brought them all in and had each group member explain
his/her part. Often the student who slacks off can't even
articulate what is in the project. Obvious.

9. Marking blog posts
• Depends on the type of blog and type of assignment.
• Usually I impose a strict word limit of 300–500 words.
• For many blog post assignments, I mark pass/fail (1 or 0)*
• For posts that require analysis, I mark 2, 1, or 0, with the
“1” being reserved for posts that are not quite bad enough
to warrant 0. 
Blog assignment A (pass/fail)
Blog assignment B (2, 1, or 0 points/marks)
* Minor spelling, grammar errors, etc., will pass. But there’s a point at which too
many errors, too much carelessness, is unacceptable — then, fail.

10. Required student comments
• System worked out for a master’s course in which all
students write blog posts on weekly assigned topics.
• Each student must comment on three other students’
blogs each week.
• Their blog post gets maximum 2 points, but comments are
1 point each (so 3 points/week).
• Comments must provide some value to the writer of the
post being commented on. (Otherwise, no point!)
Details about required comments (under heading “Weekly
blog comments”)

11. Training period for blogging
• With a semester-long blogging assignment, hyper
diligence at the start pays off
• Spend lots of time reading and commenting on students’
initial two or three posts (and comments, if required) and
mark strictly, even harshly (labor intensive)
• This effort makes my expectations clear, and for later
posts I read more lightly, mark much more quickly
• The pass/fail marking system combined with required
peer comments results in reasonable marking burden for
the instructor, after the initial training period

12. Using
Google
forms for
marking
This is a 20-point
assignment, broken down
into eight components.

13. The Google form saves all data into a Google spreadsheet.

14. Benefits to Google forms for marking
• Consistency and fairness (especially if you have tutors
doing the marking!)
• Break assignment criteria down into parts that can be
easily assessed
• Judge each part on a 1–0 or 2–1–0 scale (pass/fail or
“enhanced” pass/fail)
• Clear and straightforward for students
• Always include comments!
• Works very well for simpler production assignments at
early stages
• Makes large classes more manageable

15. Beginner production assignments
• This is the set of 12 assignments — one due each week
— that I created for an intro to multimedia reporting tools
• Basic idea is to require each student to make something
with the tool or software and turn it in
• Parameters very clearly taught and requirements listed
• Not fine-grained “how to do journalism” tasks — just how
to use the tools properly
Multimedia Reporting assignments

16. CONCLUSIONS
Rhodes JMS Staff Workshop
9–13 June 2014