Benefits of Using Rubrics

Though more commonly used in K-12 classes, rubrics can work as a fantastic form of communication between student and teacher.  When rubrics are utilized for a course, students need only to glance at their rubric for an assignment for expectations and specific components of focus for an assignment.

Why use rubrics?

Firstly, rubrics help instructors do a plethora of things within their courses including remaining consistent in their assessment of assignments between students, provide feedback that promotes student learning in a sustainable way, and clarifying expectations of an assignment for students.  Some instructors have even found that rubrics help save them time when grading large amounts of work, since the grading criteria remains the same throughout.  These instructors still spend time writing comments, but they are then also able to return to the scale their rubrics are set on in order to grade more efficiently.

Secondly, rubrics also help students.  Providing students with a copy of a rubric before they being completing an assignment will help them understand overall expectations for their work, and will make note of specific components that are listed on their rubrics.  Students are also more likely to become aware of their learning process and the progress that they make throughout the class by utilizing the feedback received on rubrics to improve in the future.

How can you develop a rubric?

There are several different types of rubrics that you can choose to employ within your classroom depending on which one works best for the work you’re assigning.  If you’re new to rubrics, start small by creating one rubric for one assignment in a semester.  This will allow you to test the waters and see if rubrics work well for you within your own courses.  It may also be beneficial to ask colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments, just to get an idea of what sort of rubrics might be the most helpful. 

When creating a rubric, consider how you would outline the elements or critical attributes that will be evaluated for the assignment.  Then work on creating an evaluative range for performance quality underneath each element.  Leave comment boxes next to each section of the rubric for optional comments on specific components or to reference students back to a particular section of their work.  From there, all that’s left is to assign a numerical scale to each level.  Be sure to provide students with a copy during class and walk through the components together, asking for questions along the way.

For those of you who would rather type your comments, consider making your rubric into a fill-able PDF that can easily be sent out to students.

Adapted from: Cornell University CTE

Written by: Jessica Moser 

Got a Minute? The Pros of One-Minute Papers

Looking for a quick and simple way to collect written feedback from students?  Try implementing the minute-paper!

What is a minute-paper?

Designed by Berkeley physics professor Charles Schwartz, a minute-paper is actually exactly as it sounds: a paper that you ask students to write in just a minute or two.  Instructors provide a question or two that is focused on class content that has been discussed or assigned, the students hand in their papers before leaving class for the day, and the instructor then has written feedback from students providing insight on student understanding, confusion, and active listening.  Because minute papers are quick to administer and easy to analyze, they are perfect for use in large classes.

When can I use the minute paper?

Really any time during the class period is a good time for minute papers.  You might start the class off with a question about what they thought was the most significant point in the assigned reading for class that day.  You could take a break in the middle of class for students to critically think about the content you’d been discussing.  Some instructors like to end class with minute papers to gauge overall student understanding on the lecture from that day.  Whenever you choose to implement minute papers, they all serve the same purpose—to seal ideas in students’ minds, provide you with an idea of where they are in their learning, and help them develop critical thinking skills.

What should the questions look like?

Your questions can be a large majority of things.  You might choose to keep your questions the same each time you assign a minute paper, like these:

1)      What is the most significant thing you learned today?

2)      What question is uppermost in our minds at the end of today’s session?

Or they could be more content-specific, like these:

1)      Explain the relationship you witnessed between today’s readings and the readings we discussed last week.

2)      We’ve just talked about the scientific flaws in Jurassic Park III.  Write for one minute on which you consider to be the most serious.

Or they could have some fun with them by using questions like these:

1)      You are going to make a movie of Galileo.  Cast the major characters using contemporary actors.  Provide a two or three sentence rationale for your casting choices.

2)      Dear Abby: My high school teacher said I could never use “I” in an essay.  Now I’m at UW-Eau Claire and I’m being told the most horrible things, like I can use “I” if it’s appropriate.  What should I do?  Is that true?  And if so, when is it appropriate?  Signed, “I” am confused in Eau Claire”

Are there other perks to using one-minute papers?

Yes!  If you choose to have students include their names on their papers, you can also use these as attendance trackers.  Otherwise, it’s perfectly acceptable for answers to remain completely anonymous—often an encouraging aspect for introverted students.  You can have students create tables, graphs, or other graphics in place of written answers is you prefer.  Plus, according to several studies at universities including Berkeley, Indiana, and Nebraska-Lincoln, students consistently find the use of minute papers fun and engaging.

Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Adapted from: Berkeley University 

Teaching Large Classes: Getting Students to Utilize Feedback

Grading and providing feedback is one of the most time consuming things that instructors must do.  Rubrics, written comments, point systems, whatever your grading method may be, it’s no question that you devote a large amount of time using it to provide constructive feedback to your students.  But what happens when those comments, suggestions, and point values are never read?  When students simply skip over your handwritten responses to glance at the letter grade and stuff the assignment away?  How do we get students to not just read the feedback that is provided to them, but to also take it constructively to use on future work?
 

Surprisingly, the first step to curing this problem is reconsidering the ways in which you provide the feedback itself.  According to Maryellen Weimer in her article “Getting Students to Act on our Feedback,” the feedback we so often provide to students tends to be more about justifying the grade we’ve awarded rather than highlighting what a student needs to do to improve.  Instead, include “three or four specific suggestions that target what the student should work on to improve the next assignment.”

I know what you’re saying, “But that still won’t help if the students aren’t actually reading the feedback anyway!”  Weimer provides a solution to that as well.  She suggests providing students with a few minutes in class to look over and read through their feedback, and then asking them to write an action plan on how they will use that feedback to improve their work in the future.  This action plan doesn’t have to be long, just a few statements will do.  You could even have students start with the same opening line, “Based on the teacher’s feedback and my own assessment of this work, here are the three things I plan to improve in the next assignment.” 

If you don’t particularly like the paragraph response as an option, try one of these instead:

• Write in revisions – this is a particularly helpful method with papers and written work.  Have students turn in their work a second time, but making note of the revisions they made according to the comments and suggestions that you had provided on their first-round paper.

• Collaborative revisions – have students bring in their work to review with someone near them.  Students should focus on the feedback you provided and then decide on ways that each of them could utilize that feedback to revise their work.

These assignments encourage students to take the constructive criticism you’ve provided and use it to become better writers, thinkers, and studiers in the future.

Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Teaching Large Classes: Pre-Class Assignments

Time flies when you’re having fun.  Maybe this phrase is to blame when you realize week after week that your classes have flown by, and you didn’t have nearly as much time as you thought you would.  And if that weren’t troublesome enough, this challenge only increases with the number of students per class, forcing professors and students alike to feel rushed through material.

Professors at Vanderbilt university propose a way to alleviate these time constraint stresses by getting students engaged in class material outside of scheduled class hours, and then using in-class hours for discussion, collaboration, and debates.  Here's how they do it.

Students are assigned a pre-class bit of homework (much like the already are in most classes).  These homework assignments are more about involving students in contemplating the content rather than formulating structured responses, so the style of responses may vary throughout the semester.  Some examples of this pre-class homework are:

• Watching a video

• Responding to a news article

• Developing an argument based on a reading

• Choosing a quote from a reading that stood out to them

• Reading a case study

• Listening to a podcast

Even though the design of this pre-class work can look different each time, the goal is always to get students to begin thinking critically about the content on an individual level before arriving for class. 

Once class time does roll around, your students will have prepared an understanding of the content you will be covering.  It is suggested that you take some time to explain to students that being prepared for class includes: being able to make claims about the reading and use examples to back up those claims, make connections between the things they've read about and their own experiences, and be able to work with the text in a knowledgeable and insightful way.  (Asking them to create lists, annotate their texts, or write a summary of their arguments are all useful ways for them to prepare.)

Vanderbilt professors then utilize these developed ideas by arranging students into groups of no more than six students.  Ask your groups of students to discuss the responses that they came up with on an individual basis about the homework, and consider how their individual responses compare to one another.  You might even choose to assign another shorter reading for them to delve into as a group in order to stir up some new ideas.

Later, choose groups to share what they discussed concerning the main elements of class that day.  This may spike mutual agreement over a text, but it could also transform into a debate of ideas between class members, forcing them to decide on ways to structure their argument based on facts and ideas they have constructed themselves from the course material.

It's recommended to alternate using pre-class homework strategies like this one and regular lecture class days on a weekly basis so that students are able to interact directly with the material they are learning, and still gain insight through direct instruction.  Or, a daily combination of pre-class work alongside interactive lecture would work just as well.

Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Teaching Large Classes: Using the Exit Ticket Strategy

Due to the vast amount of students in large class settings, many professors face the same challenge of how to gauge what your students have taken away from a particular session.  Did they truly understand the main ideas of the lecture?  Did they have any questions that weren't answered?  These issues can be eased through the use of exit ticket strategies

An exit ticket is something each student hands in before leaving at the end of class.  On it, students might answer a question, state the main point of the lecture, or ask a question that they have about the content that had been covered.  The ticket can be a note card, a scrap of notebook paper, or a sticky note.  The only real requirement of the ticket itself is that it must be able to serve as a way for students to convey a message to the professor.

Here are some ways to utilize an exit ticket within your class:

1. Ask students to take the last few minutes of class to write about what they believed was the most important point in class that day.

2. Have students write a question they still have regarding the material.

3. Ask students to answer a specific question that you come up with regarding the material that was covered in class that day.

After this has been completed, simply provide a space for students to hand in or drop off their exit tickets before they leave, and viola!  You have instant feedback on your most recent lecture.

This strategy enables you to reinforce concepts that were confusing to students, and to see what main concepts students left class knowing.

Other ways to include the exit ticket strategy include:

• Requiring post-class discussion posts on D2L to see if students have questions about the content covered in class each day.
• Instead of handing in their tickets, students could use the last few minutes of class to discuss the things they wrote about on their cards with their peers around them.  Often, this leads to clarification through discussion with each other.
• Exit tickets don't necessarily need to used at the end of class.  If you'd like to implement them at the beginning or middle to evoke discussion or problem-solving, go for it!

 Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser