Newly Finalized Qualitative Assessment Project Documents

We have spent some significant time in June reviewing, revising, and finalizing key documents created for the Qualitative Assessment Project. (Special thanks to CDC part-time staffer and NU graduate student Desiree Weber for her great work on these.)

Resultantly, there is a revised set of Debater Development Benchmarks, which forms the backbone of the full Qualitative Assessment Project, since it lays out the learning objectives that each CDL debater should attain each year of their participation. The Debater Development Benchmarks (DDB) will orient and organize the full range of CDL coach professional development and student training this school year, beginning with the coach training courses coming later in July, and then the student workshops in early August.

Similarly, we created new rubrics for qualitative assessment of our students’ debating each year. And now, thanks to feedback we received from evaluators during trainings that took place this past spring, we have fashioned the rubrics themselves into assessment forms (the second sheet of each rubric).

Qualitative Assessment Rubric — Year One

Qualitative Assessment Rubric — Year Two

Qualitative Assessment Rubric — Year Three

We strongly encourage you to dive into these documents when you get some time to devote to your debate program this summer (be sure to download them — clicking on the links pulls up a “preview” version only). We suggest this in part to orient yourself for the upcoming season’s Qualitative Assessment Project, which will encompass all CDL schools, but also in part to begin to think about how you can use the benchmarks and rubrics to plan and calibrate your own professional development in competitive academic debate and to organize and design your teaching and coaching instructional strategy or even curriculum for your students in the 2012/13 school year.