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 

Grading Collaborative Writing in the College Classroom

We’ve all witnessed the reactions to mention of the dreaded group project.  Worse still, the deafening collective gasp of shock when talk of a collaborative paper is thrown in the mix.  It’s no secret that college students fear group assignments, and with the difficulties of scheduling meetings, separating work, and relying on complete strangers to do their portion of the project with as much vigor and studious focus as one would do it individually?  Well, needless to say, it can be a stressful concept.

In fact, I can remember back to my first college group paper, and the ultimate betrayal I felt when I stayed up night after night researching, organizing, and writing, only to find out that my other group members waited until the day before it was due to do their own portions.  Then, it’s like some sort of unwritten code among the student body (especially in freshman level courses, mind you) to make sure that everyone gets an adequate grade on the peer evaluations.  The peer pressure in that alone is enough to make one question why they didn’t just do the entire project on their own from the get-go.

So, amidst all of this struggle, one question remains:  how is it possible to adequately and fairly grade a collaborative group project or paper?

An article released by Carnegie Mellon listed the different options concerning individual grading on a group scale.  One of these options was to have each student write a reflective journal piece to hand in with their group work.  This journal includes the things they struggled with individually with the project and how they overcame those struggles, and then also discusses the overall contributions of each group member, how often the group met before handing in their project, and any other details students might like to share with you concerning the completion of the project.  If you are planning on utilizing this type of assessment, make sure students know that their responses in these journals will remain confidential, and only you will be reading them.  Other ideas included individual quizzes or exams after group papers have been handed in to make sure all members of the group were equally fluent on the content their paper or project addressed.

If you’d like to be a little more personal with your assessments, and the class size isn’t too daunting, have students schedule individual conferences with you to discuss how the collaborative side of things went.  That way, you can take notes, and it enables you to discuss the importance of group roles within your classroom beforehand.  If students enter a project knowing that they will have to face you with information on their contribution, and that others will be telling you directly about their contributions as well, chances are they will be at least slightly more motivated to put their fair share of effort forth.

It's also strongly recommended that you never give a flat group grade to every person within the group.  Since students tend to split work among themselves in order to then bring their pieces together to create a larger cohesive piece, it might be beneficial for group members to label portions they personally are able to take credit for before handing in the finished product.  That way, you are able to better assess individual portions as well as take into account the finished product as a whole.  Utilizing a rubric that hosts point values for both the collaborative and individual aspects separately will help make grading and providing feedback seamless and consistent.

Tip Provided By:  Jessica Moser

Active Learning Activities - Bob Eierman, Chemistry

Many people have fond memories of making crafts, gluing together Popsicle sticks, and coloring inside (or outside) the lines of a dinosaur coloring book either as a kid or with their kids (for you older folks in the readership). A much fewer amount of people have fond memories doing a lot of the same things when they were in Middle School and they were desperately trying to assemble a poster that could kick the crap out of Danny Jones’ poster at the science fair. And an even fewer amount have fond memories of doing the same things at the collegiate level where supplies of colored pencils, glue, and artistic motivation are often quite depleted. But the poster—an excellent learning and presentation tool—cannot be written away simply because it can often be a pain to create. Dr. Eierman, with the help of Gene Leisz, keeps the poster a part of his curriculum by introducing a digital template that the students can work on together in the active learning classroom: 

Setting: Students presented research projects with the aid of digital posters at the pod stations (15 pods total with 3 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: As part of the final project in Chem 213 (lab), each student independently selects a research question, gathers and analyzes samples in the lab, completes calculations and statistical analysis, and draws conclusions. The design and presentation of the poster is the culminating event of the research project.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: Each student created a digital poster using a PowerPoint template designed (by Gene Leisz) to fit the pod screens in the active learning rooms. There were three students to a pod and they pulled up all three of their posters onto the desktop. The first student displayed their poster; we then spent about 30 minutes visiting the displayed posters in both rooms (CEN 3814 and CEN 3504), and non-presenters moved around viewing the posters. Next, we switched to the second student at each pod and visited them for the next 30 minutes. A final 30-minute session allowed us to visit the last of the posters. In about 2 hours, we displayed 46 posters. The poster quality was high and students said the posters were easy to create starting with the provided template.

After the activity: Students also submitted the posters through the D2L Dropbox, and I was able to grade them electronically in the comfort of my office. No printing was necessary and students were able to include graphs, photographs and other imagery that enhanced the posters. In addition, the students and I will be able to retain a copy of the poster(s).Students and faculty recognized that this was an excellent way to create and display high quality posters.

Additional comments from instructor: "I have been doing poster sessions like this for over 20 years, typically with posters mounted on cardboard. The old way was a pain for the students to create and difficult physically for me to grade. As a group, these were the best looking and highest quality posters I've ever seen. Many students commented that this was an extremely convenient way to make and display this important product of the culminating event in the course. I will definitely do this again with my Chem 213 class."

Tip provided by: Bob Eierman

Write-up by: Jon Pumper

Faculty Projects - Clear Rationale

Professor:  Kaishan Kong

Department:  Languages

Name of Group: Successful Teaching Practice

Life is simply more enjoyable when you understand why you are doing the things you do. For instance, a person might demand that you swallow a stalk of celery whole, a rather unpleasant if low-calorie experience, and you would be utterly miserable if you were not aware that it was to compete in the local celery consumption contest and now you had a chance to go home with brand new, celery-themed cook book. Assignments are much the same way: homework that may otherwise be deemed as “busy work” is more likely to be enjoyable when the purpose behind it is well contrived and clearly articulated to the students. Dr. Kaishan Kong, department of Languages, speaks to this technique (among others) in her project associated with CETL’s group “Successful Teaching Practice:”

"The project was to create a collaborative video for the final summative assessment in the Beginning Chinese course. The purpose was to engage students to use Chinese language in a context, encourage negotiation strategies and enhance their collaborative skills. The techniques I applied from the CETL Successful Teaching Practice workshops included:

-Giving clear rubrics and peer review.

-Grouping students with a purpose.

-Clear delivery of the group project purpose, rationale, process and expectations.

-Role play in class to prepare for the final project.

-Develop a process for the overall project: prepare, introduce, monitor and end."

Refocusing on purposeful learning, Kong cites that the students were much more receptive to the assignment when they knew the reason for it:

"I shared my rationale for the group work and clear expectations. Students understood that this project was an opportunity for them to apply what they have learned in a comprehensive way and to enhance their communicative skills, so they were very willing to do it."

She notes that it’s simply a matter of voicing what you are already doing:

"I always have students’ best interest in mind when preparing for my lessons, but making it explicit to the students was helpful to connect me with students. By sharing the rationale of this project, I made students understand the benefit of this activity and my intention. They trusted me more and were devoted to achieve learning."

In addition to this change, Kong also altered her project design in relation to group composition, classroom work time, and project segmentation:

• Grouping Students: "I grouped students based on their proficiency level and the dynamic that I have observed in class." 
• Work Time: "I designated some time in class for them to prepare for the project.  I observed group interactions and gave feedback. Students approached me with their questions and inquiries for confirmation and clarification. I also alerted students to the common pitfalls, from sentence patterns to uneven workload distribution."
• Segmentation: "I broke the project into several segments and was transparent with the points to each segment. I also gave each student a peer-review form to grade on their colleagues’ contribution to the team project."

She ends by referencing the significance CETL’s best practices had in her alterations she enacted not only to her project, but also for her course:

"It was an experiment of backward design for my course. When I had a list of expected outcomes for the final project, I moved backward to consider how I would design my teaching so students would be able to achieve these skills in order to demonstrate these skills in the project. In this way, instruction and assessment became more relevant to the final objectives."

Write up by Jon Pumper

Teaching Tip: Dr. Maria DaCosta on Projects that Impact the Course.

Dr. Maria DaCosta, Department of Economics, discusses how she designs student projects to encompass diversity and create a meaningful impact on course content:

I ask the students to select the topics for the group projects. By doing that I am catering to their preferences and foundations. Each student is to submit up to three topics, and then I set up the groups, matching topic choices while taking into account the diversity of the group in terms of gender, major, background, and class performance. Then, I adjust the last part of the course content to reflect the group project topics, covering the topics that seemed to be of great interest more in depth and filling in the gaps where I see them. The final exam will have at least one or two questions based on each presentation, to reinforce the significance of these projects. 

Interviewed by: Jon Pumper