Hello, I'm Michelle Prytula from the College of Education and I have the privilege to speak
with you briefly today about rubrics in your assessment scheme.
Brown and Glasner in 1994 found that
assessment is probably the single greatest factor in influencing how your students learn
in your classes. And when I think you assessment as having that strong of an influence, I think
about the ways in which I can use assessment to get the greatest learning happening in
my classroom. Let's talk specifically about rubrics. Officially, rubrics are defined as
guides, rules, they contain criteria for grading. But, when we use them effectively, they do
a whole lot more. They assess work, they guide the learner, they guide the teacher, they
help with prioritization of tasks so that students focus more on one thing than maybe
another. They help objectify assessments, although I know that one assessment tool can
never be perfectly objective. They help with alignment, they help with transparency. Again,
they help with prioritization and they are not only an assessment tool, but they are
also a learning tool. Rubrics have three basic parts. They have assessment criteria, the
weighting of those criteria, and the levels of quality for each of the criteria. Because
it is the assessment device, it informs the students about what it is that they are supposed
to do; therefore, it directs their work. Because it is provided usually ahead of time (and
I strongly recommend that it is provided ahead of time), it is usually transparent, consistent,
and objective. I always like doing this when I am teaching a class on assessment: signs
that you may need to use a rubric is if you are writing the same comments on your students'
papers or exams or submissions. If you read a few papers before you start grading, so you
that you can get a feel for how you ought to approach the assessment task. If you decide
how to assess after the assignments come in, that might be a sign that you need to use
a rubric. If you are always assessing work and you can't seem to get one piece of work
done before another comes in. If you worry that you are grading your papers differently,
even within the same submission, so that the earlier papers are graded differently than the later
papers because of exhaustion or what you've learned or whatever else. If you realize,
and this is a painful one, after grading a few papers that your students didn't understand
what they were supposed to learn. And then the last one, which is probably the one that
is the most difficult to tackle or to understand, is when student express concerns that your
grading may be a little bit off and you perhaps wonder if they're right. Rubrics can actually
help you assess most of the work that you are asking your students to do, and I've made
a list right here, but it absolutely doesn't include everything. The basic construction
of a rubric, I've alluded to it briefly before, but I'll illustrate it here, is that you've
got the title of the assignment and a description of the assignment on the page, the criteria
are on the page, the levels of performance, and then the descriptions within each criteria.
Now, I always give my students the rubrics for every assignment in the course at the
beginning of the term, usually right in the syllabus, but that varies. Some instructors
that I've worked with give the rubric at the outside of each assignment. Some instructors
even co-construct the rubrics with their students. Here is the first rubric that I would like
to share with you today. It's a rubric that I use for writing at the upper-level, but
it's an undergraduate rubric. You'll notice at the top, there's the assignment name and
sometimes I'll actually include the description of the assignment right there so that students
don't have to go back to their syllabus to take a look at what is required. Across the
top right here I have the different criteria - or, sorry, the different levels that our
students can achieve. These match the University of Saskatchewan grading standards, which is
available on our PAWS website. A lot of the same language that is provided in that grading
standards document is used in this rubric. On the left, I have the criteria of what
I want my students to do. I just want to scroll down to show these. For this particular assignment,
because it is a writing assignment, the identification of the thesis and purpose statement, organization
and structure, knowledge and use of theory, and whatever else is important. This assignment
is one that I give to my students at the beginning of the term, so I attach more weight to the
thesis and purpose statement, but these can be changed. So, if in any given class, my
students have to submit two or three papers, for the third paper, as long as my students
know ahead of time, and because I've had a lot of practice, I could change this to 5.
Then perhaps move the conclusion to 10 or make another category that I think they may
become more adept with. Within each of the criteria, I have descriptions, worded descriptions,
so that my students know what it is that they need to achieve. Anytime that I give a rubric,
I also provide an exemplar to my students which are sample papers at different grade
levels that my students can look at to become familiar with. Then I score - I read the work
and score my students according to where they are for each of these criteria. At the end,
I total the rubric - total the numbers that they get - and then I add them to 50, which
according to the University of Saskatchewan grading standards, is the passing score. So,
you'll notice for any of these criteria, if the student is unable to identify a thesis
or if they have inadequate organization, they wouldn't be scoring any points here and I
would be having a conversation with that student and help them understand what it is that they
need to do and then they would have an opportunity to submit their work and score above 50. But,
according to the University of Saskatchewan grading standards, if they are doing minimal
work, they ought to still be passing. Therefore, perhaps in this category, a student might
get a 2, they might get a 4 here, they might a 6 here, whatever it is that they are getting,
I would sum and add it to the 50 and that would be their score. Here is that same example,
the writing rubric, with marks on it. For this particular student, they had a pretty
strong thesis statement. It was excellent according to the grading standards, so they
received a 7. The same for organization, same for knowledge and use of theory, and 8 for
supporting paragraphs. Their conclusion was quite weak, so they scored a 1 and then their
concision and style was between two categories and received a score of 2.5. These were added,
which total 30.5 added to the 50, which received a paper score of 80.5. Just to summarize,
rubrics provide a lot of benefits, both for the students and the instructors. For the
students, you can clearly see that they provide a great deal of feedback. Expectations are
clear. Students are in charge of their own learning before they start the assignment,
especially if you ask your students to submit a self-evaluation using the rubric before
they hand in their assignment or with the assignment. This forces them to look at each
of the categories; therefore, they tend not to skip something that is important. I also
find that it allows my assessment to be consistent, objective, and a little bit more clear. And
even though rubrics may take more time to develop initially, I find that after using
them for one or two assignments, it is much more timely for me to mark. So much so,
in fact, I actually experience a fair bit of discomfort now when I attempt to grade
an assignment without a rubric. There are also several benefits for instructors or teachers.
Like I just said, although they are time-consuming the first time, they are time savers later
on. The also remove a lot of guesswork from assessment and consistency, objectivity, and
clarity are not only benefits for the students, but they are benefits for the instructor.
For me, when I use a rubric for assessment, I really forces me to stick to what it is
that I have asked the students to do. Therefore, if they submit something that I find is not
to the level that I was hoping for, it forces me to improve what it is that I am doing in
the classroom so I can get my students to achieve the results that we are both looking
for. And that concludes this brief presentation on assessment using rubrics. I hope you found
it beneficial and good luck in developing them in the future.