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. Comments are closed.
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Abigail Smith & Tope OnitiriInstructional Design team for SHPRS Archives
June 2022
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