Assessing Creativity through Common Consensus Discussion
The assessment rubric
In stage 2, it took a long while to develop the rubric. One major problem encountered was coming up with appropriate descriptions for different levels of creative performance. For the current rubric, most of the words used were drawn from the responses of the Delphi panel as well as terms usually used in the filmmaking context. However, when put into use, there were still differences in the understanding and interpretation of individual items and descriptions. For example, there were a few videos that students had laid in an existing song as the only sound source. Two assessors accepted it as a sound element while the third one referred it as 'insignificant' for 'innovative use of sound' and did not give any grade.
It looks as if when dealing with creativity, there is still subjective judgment in the process of assessment that cannot be avoided. A thorough and objective discussion with consensual criteria can only make things more explicit and transparent but cannot be expected to ensure absolute objectivity. Compared with a single letter grade on creativity, in the above-mentioned case, at least the student concerned would know from the rubric that it is the sound he/ she used that the assessor does not agree with. The student can then decide what to do.
The column of "Not significant to the project" turned out to be an effective heading in this rubric, which dealt with creative products (in this case short video) that are composites of many different elements. Among the 23 video projects, 3 of them did not use any actors, 2 used puppets instead while 1 just used objects such as drinking glasses, reflection of water etc. to tell a story. Therefore, the item "Acting" under "Craftsmanship" did not apply to those projects.
