I am with you on this one Dan. While PowerPoints can provide good information, I think students become over dependent on them. I am always being asked why I don't have a PowerPoint of my lesson, from students. I think it can sometime make them less interested in thinking on their own.
I think that any process including rubrics should always be looked at for ways to improve. Things change over time, and rubrics should keep pace with the changing conditions of class assignment objectives.
Dori,
Right on. I just posted similar information to another post in this forum. We have to ensure that the criteria are complete and clear and that the rubric is measuring exactly what we want it to measure. Nice job.
It's important to evaluate rubrics used to make sure they are assessing what you want them to be, they are fair, they are providing ample feedback, and that they are reliable/valid.
Patricia and Fred,
Thanks for discussing the importance of updating rubrics. They are like anything else we develop (tests, lesson plans, etc.) in our classroom as we have to make sure they are up to date and measure what we want them to measure. Thanks!
Patricia,
We do want to make sure students understand the expectations and we assess the assignments/projects correctly and with consistency. Be careful in developing your rubrics and explaining them to the students and you'll see the consistency increase. Thanks!
Hi Fred,
We have software in some of our classes and we have codes that are updated yearly as well and when these things are updated we also have to make sure that the rubrics is updated to make the current material.
Patricia
We have to know exactly what we are asking the students to do and we also need to make sure that if anything changes in the rubrics that it is changed so that we are not misleading the students and causing them to complete an assignment in the wrong fashion.
I want to know what is in my classroom so that I can answer any questions that the students may have and if I am not familiar with the rubrics I cannot do that.
Patricia
Marie,
You can involve the students in the rubric review process as well. Have them do some peer feedback using the rubric and see what they think.
Thanks.
I believe that I need to evaluate my rubrics, if anything, to ensure that the students understand what I am grading them on. The more I use the rubric the more I find things that I need to clarify. This course has helped me a great deal in realizing that.
Thanks.
Ester,
Excellent. It is great that you realize that the rubric needed revisions to help the students. Keep up the good work.
Hello Dr. Wilkinson,
I believe it is important to evaluate rubrics to ensure that you are measuring what you intend to measure. I know for me in courses, assignments tend to change over time depending on the mix of the student-population, the desire to reinforce certain skill set, and the desire to incorporate new content to keep the course fresh. For example, in my psychology course, we always used a standard rubric for the term papers. The rubric was developed in an Advanced English course for a similar research paper assignment, however I found that the rubric was not addressing what I wanted students to take away in completing the research paper for my course. The students needed to incorporate certain psychological perspectives, explain them, and integrate the research that they found using those perspectives. There was no way for me to address this using that version of the rubric. I went on to revise the rubric to incorporate those aspects by adding a new section that focused on research application. I have found that students now understand why it is important for them to incorporate the psychological perspectives and how this information makes their papers so much better.
Steven ,
Yes, we have to make sure we review our rubrics to make sure they are measuring what we think they should be measuring.
Thanks again for your input.
To ensure that they are current and that course objectives are understood and met.
Kara,
Right. We always have to keep reviewing rubrics just as we review our courses, tests, teaching, etc. It's a continual process to enhance teaching and learning. Thanks for your input.
Things change in your classes. You want to make sure that your rubric is effective with the students and classes you are working with at this time.
Gloria,
Just like anything we use in our teaching, we must review the rubrics. It's important to make sure the criteria are on target, you are assessing what you really want to assess and the that students understand the expectations. Thanks for your input.
Rubrics should be evaluated to provide for improvement, especially if there has been a modification to course content, or objectives. There is nothing worse that having a course modified to reflect current needs or trends and have an outdated rubric, or not notice that the rubric has not been updated until after the course has begun. That places the instructor in a difficult position and makes him/her appear to be unprepared at the onset of the course.
Tp prevent this, the instructor should carefully review the rubric beforehand to determine if the rubric follows good development guidelines, what criteria are used to judge students' work, if there is a difference between the levels of work, and if the rubric provided for various types of feedback.
The instructor could use students to generate an appropriate rubric for the course that could enhance student motivation, interest and performance, which would provide a win-win outcome for instructor and students.
Muriel,
Great. I always ask my students how to improve the rubric. They many times come up with ideas I didn't even think about.
I evaluate my rubrics for effectiveness and to assure students understand the grading and assignment criteria. I not only use items such as met, not met, or correct, incorrect... I also add additional feedback inside of a comment box explaining the learning outcomes in detail.
