"Instructional" Rubrics

Hello Colleagues, How have you used rubrics in your teaching? Have your students found these tools helpful? Have you ever engaged students in helping to create a rubric? If so, how did that go for you?

I use rubrics a lot in my teaching, and I have often engaged students in helping to create them. When students help to create a rubric, this gives them a deeper understanding of what is important for a particular assignment. For example, we've created rubrics for projects such as presentations or digital stories. I'm attaching a rubric students and I co-developed for a digital poetry project in which students used digital storytelling software and narrated a poem that was meaningful to them.

I came across a wonderful article "Using Rubrics to Promote Thinking and Learning" by Heidi Goodrich Andrade available here http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb00/vol57/num05/Using-Rubrics-to-Promote-Thinking-and-Learning.aspx. While this article is written for a K12 audience, it is also relevant to adult educators. I especially like the rubric example included in the article and what the author says about rubrics being --not only assessment tools, but also "instructional tools."

The article includes steps for designing rubrics and suggests that engaging students in the process of rubric creation can be a good learning experience in and of itself. Rubrics make evaluation criteria explicit from the outset and are also powerful tools for students to assess themselves.

It would be great to hear how folks are using rubrics in their teaching.

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, Assessment COP

Comments

Susan,

I appreciate that you've reminded me about co-constructing the rubrics for assessing the quality of responses/products. I can imagine lots of ways that developing a rubric could be a good activity for deepening and testing one's knowledge of the content.

I'm wondering in the example that you provided from the poetry project if the students collectively designated the qualities that distinguished the levels of the performance? At least in the version of the document that I saw, only a rating scale (1 to 4) was provided at the top of the page.

The article you referenced was also helpful in developing a deeper understanding of rubrics. 

Appreciatively,

Daryl

Miriam,

I imagine that the trouble is that a period( .) was copied with the link.

Copy the link into your browser and be sure that a period is not attached at the end of the link.

I was able to read the article that she suggested but initially had the same trouble that you encountered.

Best,

Daryl

Thanks for the clarification on how to access the article, Daryl. You asked about the ratings 1-4. In fact, the author of the cited article suggests that most everyone has a sense of what these ratings mean and that language is not always needed. I thought this made some sense. What do you you think?

Cheers, Susan

Susan,

Just to be clear, I support/like the idea of developing scoring rubrics. The exercise could be valuable for developing the learners' deeper knowledge of the content or skills.

As you suggested, I imagine that most of us would have some intuitive sense that a rating of 4 is qualitatively better than 3, 2, or 1. 

In some of our other research and technical assistance activities, we have used a rating scale and then provided a description to help the "rater" distinguish among the ratings. The descriptors helped everyone focus on the more important (essential) elements of rubric because we had examples in which raters could over focus on some aspect (e.g., spelling errors, handwriting) and miss the point that conceptual expression was most important in the exercise. By providing those qualitative descriptive anchors for the ratings that in turn improved the reliability of our measures across those raters. Reliability was very important to this work.

Here are some examples from a program implementation rating scale with those descriptors linked to numeric ratings. I may be wrong, but I think the examples are from work in Pennsylvania. The scale was designed to rate multiple indicators of a program and its implementation in local settings.

3 = Evidence of full implementation fidelity: Evidence indicates that all relevant details/look-fors for this indicator are in place as described. Timelines, frequencies, staff involvement, learner behaviors, curricular and intervention parameters are documented and supported with evidence, with only minor variations. Evidence suggests the indicator has been institutionalized throughout the program.

2 = Partial implementation fidelity: Evidence indicates that some of the relevant details/look-fors for this indicator are in place as described. Timelines, frequencies, staff involvement, student behaviors, curricular and intervention parameters are as described in most situations, with only minor variations. Many students and staff are involved. Evidence indicates that the program is implementing this indicator with fidelity, but has details yet to address in this indicator.

1 = Lacks evidence of implementation fidelity: Evidence indicates that none or few of the relevant explanations/look-fors are present for the indicator. Systems and or activities are not in place or fall outside the criteria of the adopted framework. Timelines, frequencies, staff involvement, student behaviors, curricular and intervention parameters are not in place. Few staff or only targeted learners are involved. Evidence indicates that the program is not on course to implement this indicator with fidelity. 

Thank you for offering your ideas. Maybe simpler (just numerical ratings) is the way to go! Surely other readers have some observations and wisdom to share about scoring rubrics as curricular activity.

Regards,  Daryl

Hi Daryl and all, I think there are times when having specific rating numbers as you outline above makes sense. Your examples remind me of the rubrics used for the speaking and writing tasks on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) .

I would add that when creating rubrics with students-- especially those who may be unfamiliar with rubrics, using ratings will help the learners understand better how to score themselves as well as how the teacher will score them.

Thank you for your comments, Daryl!

Cheers, Susan

Moderator Assessment COP

 

Thanks, Susan, for sending me the article. I like the rubric very much as at gets at the meat of what should be evaluated: both what the writing says and how it says it.

It is also great, as you said above, for showing students what the teacher is looking for. I would add that it is a vehicle for discussing socio-cultural competence and what is considered good writing here in the United States.

For example, notice the organization component, which says “my writing has a compelling opening, an informative middle, and a satisfying conclusion.”  This would provide time to discuss and possibly contrast what makes good writing here in the U.S. and what makes good writing in the students’ cultures. For example, repetition and restating a thought may be considered good in cultures with strong oral traditions. In the United States, it is likely to be considered loose and rather undesirable.

It also occurs to me that this rubric supports the Career and College Readiness Standard, for example, for writing: CCR Anchor 1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Do any of you use rubrics in your classes? How?

Miriam

SME, Adult ELL CoP

Hi Everyone,

I have been following the discussion on rubrics with interest.  Miriam, I believe that you are right.  The rubric does support the CCR Anchor 1 statement.  I am responding to your question about using rubrics in the classroom.  I think that if you asked this question to instructors preparing students for the 2002 GED exam, many would say that they use the scoring rubric for instructional purposes.   I am not so sure about their use of rubrics now.  I would like to hear from the instructors out in the field.  Are you using rubrics?

Regards,

Meryl, SME College and Career Standards

I do use rubrics in the classroom.  Depending on the writing assignment, the rubrics I create or use can be very simple and only assess the lesson/skill on which we've been working on a particular day, or they can be as elaborate as the three-trait rubric used to score the 2014 GED exam's extended responses.  I think students need to know what is expected of them in advance.  The act of writing and the evaluation of writing seems so subjective that a rubric can help to define a writing task and make the daunting nature of a blank page or text box, if not necessarily easier, at least more understandable.  I also find that while going over the rubric with students or a class I am able to gauge the students' knowledge and comfort level with the skills they will be expected to perform before they have to begin writing. Having this kind of interaction with a class upfront helps to drive instruction. 

I am enjoying this discussion.

When reading Sherraine's comment above about the rubric one more thought occurred to me:

In addition to what the rubric says, the very existence of the rubric, that is, the fact that we in the United States are evaluated by a rubric rather frequently and throughout life  - -  for example, in grade school by the report card, where teachers give comments as to why they are giving the grades they give; at work by our supervisors and colleagues; after presentations by participants; or at the end of a class by our students  -- is a cultural lesson in itself. For many adult learners, especially those who come from other cultures where perhaps there is less of a focus on written evaluation(or evaluation of any kind for that matter?), this may be quite new.

 And  our students are likely to be be called on at some time not only to understand rubrics rating their performances, but to rate others on rubrics as well.  Even when traveling we are asked to rate the hotel's services, or when eating out at a restaurant.

Ubiquitous.

Miriam

SME adult ELL CoP

 

 

 

 

 

Great point, Miriam. Rubrics are certainly everywhere. It's likely that rubrics are going to be new for many adult learners, so we teachers need to explain how and why they are used in the classroom. As noted, having students help to create rubrics is a useful way to help students deepen their understanding.

Another example I can offer is a simple rubric I developed to support beginning students to improve in their ability to spell their names. The rubric helps the teacher and the learners to determine if others can understand them when they spell their name (easy to understand or mostly easy to understand) and if they can spell their name at an acceptable pace (fast or needs to be faster). I have found that using this rubric helps the students to hone this practical life skill.

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment COP