[Bestplus] Things that may come up in trainings

[Betty Stone]

In talking about this at last Friday afternoon's training at SCALE, some trainees were "not happy" with a score of 0 for LC (and consequently a total 0), since they knew that the question was understood. It helped to explain that it wold not be fair to give points to one student because the admin. understood her language, but not to another when the language was not known. as the trainer, this felt easy for me to nail. It's a test of proficiency in English, therefore, the student has to be able to perform in English to get points--the equity issue just makes it easier to swallow for those who might feel the student is getting jilted out of LC points.
 
On another tangent we briefly got into the subjectivity of Communication scores based on how familiar an admin. is with the L1 of the student. "Are we scoring Communication as ESOL professionals or as a "regular guy" would/would not understand?"
 
I have to say that I reminded the group a few times that they might not like or agree with all the questions or scores of the "expert panel," but that as long as they could find justification within the rubric, their scoring would be reliable and a variance of a point here or there would not be a deal breaker.
 
A few new questions for the list:  
1. Would people agree that the effective differences among some of the score ranges are not necessarily equidistant? What I mean is, for Communication, 0  and 1 are very distinct, 3 is also distinct. There is a broader range of answers that would fit into the category of 2 -- so one could say, the score of 2 covers more ground - and includes more possibilities. This is also the case in complexity, I think. It's pretty easy to demonstrate the elements beyond 1, but to demonstrate specific elements for a 3 pushes a student to a much higher bar....thus, the 2 rating is "broader" than the 0, 1, or 3 (or 4 for that matter).
 
Just looking for ways to help people understand in multiple ways how the scoring works out.
 
2. Has anyone had ANY difficulty with the black (or red) CDs crashing computers or doing any other weird stuff?  I have not personally, except the practice CD did freeze up once during part of my demo. We were using a new laptop for the first time, so I don't know if there is any connection there.  
 
3. Can anyone answer this tech question?:  Is it possible to network all the desktops/laptops you plan to use for BEST Plus so that you could always have access to and pull up data/lists for any particular class, regardless of the computer you were using?
 
4. People would really like to have "live" practice with a learner....Is there no way to work this into the training? I know the logistics would be tough, but it was OUR favorite part in training too!  Once I'm more familiar with the flow of the PPoint, I think some minutes shaved off here could be donated to a live test. Tell me if I'm dreaming.
 
Finally, I did my first training last Friday from 12 noon - 6:30, with two 15 minute breaks. It was a marathon, the only time I could find before SCALE people started to leave for the summer. -- I will NEVER do that again! Don't even be tempted. I had excellent snacks, but it was a long afternoon. 
 
The margarita before dinner was ever so sweet!  :)
 
Looking forward to hearing stories from others from their trainings.
 
Betty





Betty J. Stone
ESOL Program Administrator
SCALE - Somerville Center for Adult Learning Experiences
167 Holland Street, Somerville, MA 02144
Phone: 617-625-6600, Ext. 6933
FAX: 617-623-8528
bjstone13 at yahoo.com

		
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