Tena Crews

Kevin,

Rubrics can be as complex and simple as we make them. The criteria are essential and it's a must to include the objectives in the rubric as well. Thanks for your input.

Kevin Scott

It is a bit ironic that rubrics had started to fade within the researched, best-practice venue until No Child Left Behind fully ushered our culture into "assessment nation."

Because education is so difficult to assess, rubrics became the go-to method for creating replicable, quantifiable assessments that could be collated and presented up the chain. (They are often treated, institutionally, like CYA measures rather than as pedagogical tools.)

I am not being a curmudgeon here. I used them before they were cool (not to sound too much like a hipster) and I would certainly continue to use them if they did truly fade from popularity, but they can be a blunt instrument. While they do a solid job of laying out to the student what the requirements and expectations of a particular task are, they often feel a bit clunky when different elements of a student's paper require more finesse. Many instructors admit that they work backward with rubrics--decide on a grade and then figure out how to make the rubric numbers fit.

Like most educational tools, complex stuff.

Kevin

Tena Crews

Shirley,

Excellent. Anything that helps both the instructor and the students is worth trying. Keep up the good work.

Thanks!

Shirley Pennington

Dr. Crews,
I am going to start using Rubrics more in my classroom because this develops a guideline for the students to follow and will make it easier for me. This way when the grades are posted, they know ahead of time why they received that particular score.
Amanda Pennington

Tena Crews

Doris,

Yes, assessment can be challenging. It's important to think about assessment as something that we do with students and not too students. Assessment should provide feedback to students to help them improve. Thanks!