Developing and evaluating a set of process and product-oriented classroom assessment rubrics for assessing digital multimodal collaborative writing in L2 classes

Despite the growing interest in researching digital multimodal composing (DMC) in recent years, there were few attempts of tapping how assessments on DMC can best be devised to maximize students’ learning opportunities. To narrow this gap, this study proposed a set of product- and process-oriented classroom assessment rubrics that function as self-and peer-assessment tools for students when collaborating with each other to create DMC in online EAP contexts. During a four-week intervention with a veteran EAP educator, the rubric was tried out in her EAP classes as students worked in pairs to complete a DMC task. Its effectiveness was then evaluated based on the quality of student writings as well as their discussion, which was measured in terms of equality and mutuality. The product-oriented assessment rubrics was found to result in marked improvement in layout, navigation and rhetoric, whilst the process-oriented classroom assessment rubrics also enhanced both the equality and the mutuality of the collaborative process, as the dyads were inclined to establish a collaborative relationship during the task. These findings underscore the importance of using assessment rubrics as a formative assessment activity to help students harness the genre of DMC from different perspectives.