Post by Abigail Smith I often get questions about the use of grading rubrics, and for years I have thought, "I should really write an article about this." I do love the topic of rubrics, I must say! (Oops, I just gave myself away as a real nerd!) So, well, here I am, finally making time to write about them! This will be a two-part series. (At least, I intend to write two parts. Maybe I'll become so enthusiastic, I'll add a third part... who knows!) In this, the first article, I'll address some commonly misunderstood ideas about rubrics. In the next article, I'll explain how a well-written rubric should be structured and some pitfalls to avoid. But first a definitionJust to make it abundantly clear what I'm referring to by "grading rubric," let me provide a definition. A rubric is a tool for grading student assignments in which the ways to earn points are made explicit and displayed in grid format. The criteria are usually listed in the rows of the grid, and the levels of accomplishment are listed in the columns. Rubrics are usually used for grading open-ended assignments such as papers, projects, essays, and presentations; they are not appropriate for most quizzes or worksheets. An example of a rubric for an essay assignment is shown below: I want to convince you to use grading rubrics!I am proud to say, I have successfully convinced several skeptics to give grading rubrics a try, and they have converted to happy users. If I achieve nothing else in life, at least I can claim this accomplishment. Reflecting on my 8-year Instructional Design career so far, I can remember people complimenting me on various things. "Thanks for helping me brainstorm how to organize Canvas." "Thanks for reminding me to add a purpose statement to my assignments." "You're a genius, you're gorgeous, here's a million dollars, because I couldn't live without you." OK I made that last one up. But I can honestly say that more instructors have thanked me for turning them on to rubrics than for any other single tool. Rubrics are just that great. But I usually have to work through a few worries and misconceptions first. There are a few common misconceptions about rubrics I hear often. I'll debunk these by explaining what a rubric does NOT do, and what it DOES do. (At least a good rubric! There are plenty of bad ones out there, sadly. And this fact certainly doesn't help matters when I try to defend the use of this excellent tool!) Every encouragement I proffer in this article refers only to GOOD rubrics, not BAD ones. What a rubric does NOT do"Spoon-feed Students" Some instructors worry that providing a detailed grading rubric will have the effect of making their assignment too easy. Perhaps they envision students indolently sliding words from the rubric onto the paper, lazily sipping tea and relaxing back into an armchair, with no library, reference cards, blood, sweat, or even tears in sight. College should be difficult, dammit! In fact, rubrics do not baby your students. Nothing of the sort. A good rubric might have a statement such as, "The paper's thesis statement is clear and concise." In no way does this statement make the process of actually writing a thesis statement any easier. It simply makes it explicitly obvious that the student's grade depends on the existence of a well-crafted thesis statement. In fact, a carefully-written rubric may even encourage students to do MORE work than they otherwise would be inclined to, because the high expectations you have for them are direct and unmistakable. "Formulaic, Impersonal Grading" The concern is sometimes raised that using a rubric means that grading will lose the personal, heartfelt approach that we are all used to. With only a few, limited options for feedback in a rubric, it's very possible that two very different papers would receive the exact same rubrical feedback. Let's envision papers lined up on a factory conveyor belt, with a mechanized arm rhythmically stamping rubrics onto each tome that whirs past. Or let's not. This doesn't seem right. As an instructor, I'm a human not a machine! Yes, the options within a rubric are limited. However, providing a level of objectivity in grading in no way reduces your humanity. Having clear standards does not indicate a lack of heart. Counting and sorting are just as much fundamentally human activities, as as speaking and writing are. The truth is, you will be looking for a thesis statement in every single paper you grade. Objective fact. Countable. Immutable. You may as well have an easy and transparent way to communicate this. Similarly, there are other immutable criteria you use in grading, whether you've ever looked in the mirror and admitted it to yourself or not. The rubric simply makes transparent the baseline standards you are already using. Nothing precludes you from adding personal notes and other human touches, in addition to the rubric entries, when appropriate. (Don't worry, this doesn't double your workload; rubrics actually make grading faster, even when personal notes are added.) Rather, the rubric helps you organize your personalized notes, so students can more easily understand what you are referring to. Going back to our thesis statement example, perhaps your rubric has a statement such as "The thesis statement is vague or too long." If you checked that box for the paper in front of you, you could add a note to the comments area for that box, explaining how the student could have improved their specific thesis statement to get full points for that criteria. Now when the student reviews their feedback, they know which comment refers to which part of their paper, because the comment is located in the "thesis" part of the rubric. "A Tool of Oppression" OK... where to start with this one. Oppression happens when people with power are denying opportunities, suppressing potential, or causing suffering to people with less power. If you're looking for oppression in pedagogy, you might go up a level and take issue with the entire concept of grading, itself. Professors wield their power to grant important symbols of merit (grades) to students with less power; in many cases these symbols are granted inequitably, causing suffering, suppression, and other detrimental effects. Rubrics, because they are ways to distribute grades, could, therefore, be seen as tools of oppression, but only because Grading itself could be seen as oppressive. (Some people do take issue with Grading, and... fine... good for them.) But if you do not view Grading this way, or if you aren't ready to leap into Ungrading yet, or if you are worried you'd be fired if you don't provide university-mandated grades to students... then you, by necessity, do acquiesce to participating in the act of Grading. And, happily, there are good ways to mitigate inequality without fully going gradeless. It's important to point out that rubrics actually help remove bias from the grading process. They expose previously hidden standards, so that grading is transparent and applied to everyone the same way. In this sense, rubrics could actually be seen as tools of justice and equity. Oh! And it's worth pointing out, rubrics could be used in an Ungrading environment as well. Simply remove the points from the rubric, and you have a way to provide formative feedback without the pressure of points or marks. Hopefully I have convinced you that rubrics don't make your assignments simplistic, they don't remove humanity from the instructional process, and they are not inherently oppressive. (If I haven't, let's talk more! I have only been able to provide cursory arguments here.) What do they do, then? What a rubric DOES doFocuses the Assignment The act of writing a rubric forces you to decide, and to put into writing, what is truly important to you in this assignment. Why did you choose this assignment; what are you hoping to elicit from students; what truly matters here? Your course probably contains some learning objectives, and the rubric can explicitly tie the assignment to the learning objectives, bringing all course activities into coherence and harmony. Similarly, when the student reads the rubric, they gain clarity, as well, into why and how this assignment fits with the course. They can also feel guidance in the steps to take in completing the assignment, knowing they won't focus on issues that you actually don't care about. Increases Fairness Human bias in grading, while completely normal and unavoidable, is an unfortunate problem we must always work towards correcting. Bias can be partially mitigated through strategies that blind us to our students' gender, race, economic status, family, personal history, and other potentially influencing features while grading, such as by removing their names from the papers. Even so, we may still accidentally grade more or less harshly for different students, depending on our own personal states such as hunger levels, tiredness, stress, and so on. Bias is very difficult to avoid. Rubrics can help tremendously in this effort. A well-written rubric will contain clear, objective language, aiming for standards that are as measurable and transparent as possible. Students can feel assured that everyone in the class is being held to the same standards, and nobody is getting preferential treatment or being judged more stringently than anyone else. Saves Time SO MUCH TIME. I kept the most practical benefit for last, but it's the one people tend to rave about the most. Rubrics save you time through several mechanisms: 1) Students ask fewer questions about the assignments before they hand it in. The rubric makes clear what they will be graded on, so they don't need to ask. 2) Students make fewer grading challenges after you grade them. Because the rubric shows them clearly why they earned the grade they earned, they don't need to ask you. 3) The actual grading process itself is fast! You look for the evidence in the student's work, select the appropriate cell in the rubric, add a comment if necessary, and "boom." Done. Next. In traditional grading without rubrics, you end up writing a lot of the same comments over and over. "Your thesis needs to be clearer." "Your thesis needs to be clearer." "Your thesis needs to be clearer." That repetitive task adds up to a lot of wasted time over the years. The rubric builds in your commonly needed phrases, so you don't have to keep typing them out! Think of all the things you could be doing with all those extra hours in your day! I hope I have convinced you to give grading rubrics a second look. Ask an instructional designer if you'd like to discuss any of these points further!
The next article will focus on how to develop a GOOD rubric and avoid the BAD ones.
1. Draft it in documents in advanceIt's tempting to jump straight into Canvas and build the course from there. However, most people find it useful to type their materials into organizer documents first. (For example, you could use Microsoft Word or Google Docs.) Course design is a messy process, and you will change your mind often. It's easier to edit documents than it is to edit Canvas. Once you've thought through all the contingencies, built out your assignments, dotted your i's and crossed your t's, and you're satisfied you have the material ready to go, you can copy-paste the text into Canvas. This sounds like an extra step, but take my word for it. The number of seconds you spend waiting for Canvas to load after clicking that "Edit" button 10,000 times, really do add up over time. Here are some documents you could use, to help organize your thoughts as you go along. 2. Use meaningful, not menological modulesApologies for stretching the definition of "menological..." I had to continue the alliteration theme! Expect more stretch, I'll be here allll day. Rather than creating one module per week, create one module per topic. You may end up with more (or fewer) modules than you have weeks. That's OK. This allows you to use the same Canvas shell in the future, whether the course ends up being taught in a 15-week, 7.5-week, 8-week, or 6-week term. This way, the only preparations that Future-You will have to make are changing the due dates for your assignments. You won't have to drastically re-structure your entire course! Win! For example, let's say you are studying a book with 20 chapters. You could build the course with one module per chapter. In a 15-week course students would complete 1-2 modules per week; in a 7.5-week course they would complete 3-5 modules per week; and so on. This approach also has the benefit of being pedagogically sound— material is chunked in meaningful ways, and assignments directly follow the content they assess. 3. Turn to a trustworthy templateMuch of the process of building in Canvas is repetitive and tedious. For example, creating all the pages where your content will go, placing the pages into the modules, adding the headings within the pages... all can become a little monotonous. Templates come with most required building blocks pre-created. All you have to do is replace the placeholder text with your own, delete what you don't use, and customize. There are other benefits to using templates, listed on our Services: Templates page. 4. Definitely draw on the Duplicate featureLet's say you have four essay assignments planned, all worth the same number of points, and which have roughly the same instructions (page length, grading criteria, etc.). Only the topics they cover and the due dates are different. Rather than re-type all the same instructions (or copy-paste between two tabs) and apply all the same settings again and again, you could create the first assignment, then duplicate it in Canvas. You can do the same with Pages and Discussion Boards as well. This can save you several minutes per page. To find the Duplicate option:
5. Copy cross-course with Copy To"Copy To" is an option similar to "Duplicate" (described above), except it works across courses, while Duplicate works within the same course. So let's say you have an excellent assignment in Course A, which you would like to use and modify slightly for Course B. How can you do this? The hard way:
The easy way:
6. Do define due dates in the settings. Don't type them into the textCanvas allows you to enter due dates into the settings of an assignment, and it handles the work of displaying them prominently to students. You do not also need to type the dates into the instructions of the assignment. In fact, I urge you not to. This way, when you copy the course into a future semester, you do not have to go through it, scouring every page for every place where you typed in a date, and changing every one to the new semester. This is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to errors. Instead, just do two simple tasks each semester: 1) change your syllabus, and 2) change the due dates in the Canvas settings. You can adjust all your due dates in one simple page, dust your hands, and move to the next task! 7. Modify due dates en masse... Amazing!Speaking of due dates... a few times so far, I've mentioned the need to change due dates at the start of each term. Well, there's a really handy way to do that! Rather than editing each assignment individually, you can change all the due dates in your course, from a single page! It's a real time-saver.
8. Ready rubrics for reduced marking miseryI told you I'd be stretching the wordplay today... Admittedly, it takes time upfront to create a suitable rubric, so it's tempting not to bother. But the initial investment is well worth the time saved later! Once you have them, well-constructed rubrics can save you time in three ways:
9. Cue the FAQ's, reduce the queue of inquisitive superfluityI know, I know. I'm almost done inflicting these on you, promise. A lot of time each semester is spent answering the same questions over and over. If you create a FAQ's page and link to it from the course home page, you can mitigate this redundancy. 10. Perhaps peer reviews for papers and projects?A week or two before a paper or project is submitted, you can ask students to review each other's drafts. This is another thing that can be tricky to do "right," but when it is, it can save you time in grading later. Students will (generally) catch the minor stuff, so you can focus on the major stuff. Peer reviews also have the bonus feature of bringing up the overall quality of student work submitted for the final drafts. A key to making peer reviews work is to give the students a really solid checklist or rubric to work from. This will guide them as they review each other, so they know what to focus on. Another key is to create peer review groups of three or four students, not just two. This way, each student will get input from multiple people. Unhelpful (or nonexistent) advice from any academically weak students will likely be balanced with advice from stronger students. Canvas has a peer review tool, but it is clunky and leaves a lot to be desired. It's easier to create discussion groups and set up a discussion board for students to post their drafts for each other. Be sure to provide the checklist/rubric within the discussion board instructions. Another tip is to ask students to copy their drafts into Google Docs. This way other students can easily leave inline comments. BONUS: Avoid voicing time verbiage in videosWhen recording a lecture video, simply talk about the topic. Try to avoid phrases like "this week," or "welcome to the fall semester," or "due on Thursday," or "as the President said in a press conference yesterday." If you avoid specific time references, you will be able to re-use your lecture videos in different semesters, and possibly even in different courses that cover similar topics. Similarly, don't mention assignments "coming up," (unless the video is specifically about that assignment) since you might change your assignments in future semesters. BONUS #2: Simplify Scoring SchemesI have seen some pretty complicated grading systems. "Drop the lowest 5 in this category except for X assignment, then average the scores in that category, take the top 4 scores from the other category, and then apply weighting to all the categories but allow 3 points extra credit..." Hold on a minute! Is it really necessary to add all these layers? Alright, I know that's rich, coming from someone who unnecessarily spent hours working on layers of alliteration for a simple blog post about pedagogy. I'll own that. But hear me out. You aren't guarding national secrets. You're not measuring the chemical properties of nanoparticles. And your students shouldn't need a semester of calculus to figure out how they are being held accountable for their learning. The goal of grading is to help students gauge how they are doing. If it requires downloading the scores, importing them into Excel, and applying multiple formulae, it's probably too complicated to meet that goal. Take a deep breath. Hold the KISS principle firmly in mind. Is the world going to end if you simply give assignments and provide straightforward feedback and grades for those assignments? No, it won't. Your students will probably learn better, and you will save a ton of time, not needing to mess with Excel. Now go forth and formulate how you'll fill all your new-found free time!
Canvas
ZoomIf you update to the latest Zoom version, you will see the following new features:
Other Campus Technology
Well... this blog is one of the things that got lost during the pandemic crazy happenings last year. I managed to send out some newsletters, but I forgot to paste them into the blog. I'll catch up by pasting the news from the past year, below. Some of these changes were pretty major. As far as I'm concerned, making drastic changes to technology during a pandemic (unless fixing a problem) should be considered cruel and unusual punishment, but... here we are. Canvas
Zoom
Other Campus Technologies
Things we learned about Canvas recently:
Peralta Community College in California came out with an excellent rubric for assessing equity and inclusion in online courses. I thought it would be useful to condense this into a more informal checklist form, for more flexibility and approachability.
I also changed "Universal Design for Learning" into "Student Autonomy" and condensed that information significantly. (UDL is already its own extensive rubric. Plus, I think it might be copyrighted.) These principles apply to all courses, not only those online! They are great issues to think about! If the iframe below doesn't show up, here's the link: open "Equity and Inclusion in Teaching" in Google Docs
Categories |
Abigail Smith & Tope OnitiriInstructional Design team for SHPRS Archives
June 2022
Categories |