Assessment
To Try: Rubrics in e-assessment
Decriptive Criteria: Rubrics allow students to develop their own evaluative judgments. The criteria stated in a rubric can act as a sign-post or a guide for students. Rubrics allow for criteria referenced marking.
The rubric identifies identify various dimensions for quality and provides a sequence of possible criteria along a continuum within a specific dimension. Rubrics can be associated with an essay, a presentation, lab work, forum contribution or final projects. A rubric can be linked with an assessment task, so that students can view the criteria upon which they will be assessed. Or a rubric can be shared among markers when assessing students work.
Holistic use of a rubric offers an alternative to norm referenced marking, where students are compared against each other as a class and graded. Good rubrics are valuable because of the further conversations they enable. They offer students a
- set of concise and dependable dimensions (e.g. clarity, evidence, logic) that will be assessed.
- clear and thought through set of criteria for each dimension (e.g. clear and unambiguous evidence is presented)
- convenient and familiar format for reading and storing expectations
- quality or performance scale with each dimension
Three steps to construct a rubric
Step 1. Generate potential dimensions
This first step is the most important. It's what distinguishes a rubric from a traditional mark. Students are usually given a single numeric score or letter as evaluation of their work. By carefully choosing a number of dimensions to evaluate, expectations are clearer and our feedback is much more helpful
Begin by looking at your course outcomes and identify some of the criteria that you expect them to demonstrate. Work your way through the table below and jot down the names of dimensions that might make sense as part of your rubric.
|
If the outcomes have these elements... |
Then consider these as possible dimensions |
|
Written products |
Grammar and spelling Organisation Formatting |
|
Creative products |
Surprise, novelty Technical quality Adherence to conventions of the genre |
|
Collaboration |
Cooperation Taking responsibility Conflict resolution |
|
Design |
Solution effectiveness Solution creativity Justification of solution |
|
Persuasion |
Quality of argument Match of appeal to audience Organisation and sequence |
|
Analysis (scientific or otherwise) |
Data gathering and analysis Inferences made |
|
Judgment |
Adequacy of elements considered Articulation of ranking criteria |
|
Compilation |
Selection criteria Organisation |
Step 2: Select a reasonable number of criteria
In Step 1, you might have listed more dimensions than you really need, so now it's time to weed it down.
How many dimensions? Some say that a rubric should fit on one printed page. Others say that 4 to 8 dimensions is about right. There's no one correct answer, but it might help if you consider your purpose for this measurement. If it's diagnostic and formative, err on the side of more dimensions rather than fewer. If you just want to be able to give a summative evaluation of your students' performance for this particular lesson, then use fewer dimensions as it makes marking easier.
- Ask yourself what the most important aspects of this task are and rank your dimensions from most important to least.
- Eliminate those dimensions that are at the bottom of your list until you've determined the most important 4 to 8 dimensions.
- Write those remaining dimensions in the leftmost column
Step 3: Write Benchmark Descriptions
Now think about each dimension.
- What would a superb example of each dimension look like? Describe in succinctly and clearly and write each description in the rightmost column of the rubric.
- What would a poor example of the dimension look like. Look at your superb description and write a contrasting description in the leftmost column of the rubric
- Then fill out the next column or two until you've got each cell of the matrix filled.
Developing a rubric might seem like a lot of work. But making the dimensions and criteria clear upfront will
- save time when marking
- make that process more consistent and fair
- communicate your expectations to students
- help you to decide what and how to teach
- help students understand how their work is graded
References
Adapted from Dodge, B. (2001) Creating A Rubric for a Given Task, Available http://webquest.org/sdsu/rubrics/rubrics.html