Comments on: Should You Be Using Rubrics?

By: Gordon James Kerr

Gordon James Kerr — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 09:08:32 +0000

As a university teacher in East Asia my experience with rubrics as a learning aid and not just an assesment tool has always been quite positive and it certainly seems to reduce anxiety, discourage palgiarism and encourage more thoughtful and constructive work by my students. I also find than when rubrics are given out I get a lot more intelligent enquiries from students who are working on their assignments and also enjoy more constructive feedback suggestions. I think students deserve to know what is expected of them. The danger of course is to be too precriptive.

By: Dr. Willis

Dr. Willis — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:17:04 +0000

Hello Dr. Weimer,

I'm concerned about your conclusions because you mention several times that the evidence is inconclusive. You may want to check out some recent research on rubrics by Dr. Viktoria Strunk: http://gradworks.umi.com/35/42/3542066.html

Best,
Dr. Willis

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By: Danny Anderson

Danny Anderson — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:54:54 +0000

I am relatively new to rubrics myself, so I took keen interest in this article. I can't speak to their broader applicability, but I've found them to be extremely helpful in my Freshman Comp classes, both for my students and for me. I hand the rubric out with the assignment, so students are not blindsided by how I'll be grading their papers. Once they receive their graded papers, in turn, it also helps them understand specific, formal elements of their writing where improvement is needed. This is benefit 1.

Benefit 2 is for me and my time. I've designed a rubric that allows for brief comments targeted at each element under consideration. This saves me many hours of constructing detailed end-note type comments for each paper, as that detail is categorized on the rubric itself. Also, since my responses are categorized, I think that students have an easier time making use of them.

Finally, the issue of fairness. I had an unfortunate situation once where two students turned in essentially the same paper. Before I discovered this, I graded each one with the rubric and came to the same grade. This offered me some reassurance that using a rubric does offer at least some objectivity in grading papers, though I don't personally believe that is entirely possible, or even necessary (at some level. Though this is surely the Arnoldian coming out it me. I'm naturally suspicious of machinery – yet somehow I like rubrics…hmmm). Anyway.

Thanks for posting. I'm really glad I discovered this blog!