Understanding the Importance of Rubrics in Writing Assessment

A ssessing W riting? WRAD

W hat we needmight just be A F ew G ood R ubrics

A fter all, rubrics should help us define proficiency and some measure of success ..

Rubrics do have a long tradition The word itself is related to--and derives from a root meaning red. As early as 1375, notes the OED, the word was used to refer to a direction for the conduct of a divine service, inserted in liturgical books and properly printed in red. Only later was the word also used to refer to chapter or section headings--also printed in red, and was extended as well to denote categories ( We ll put this under the rubric of necessary evils . ). Our current use--which itself most likely derives from a mix of an extension of the first meaning: an authoritative rule or direction with the other two. B U T B U T

T heres good news and, perhaps, less good news

F irst, the less good news E ffective rubrics are not general ones: their effectiveness their assessment value is directly related to how closely aligned they are with the product of a particular assignment and goals of that assignment. W e must craft them ourselves taking advantage of guidelines, but making them fit what we re doing http://oneextradegree.blogspot.com/2012/02/chocolate-chip-cookie-rubrics-and.html

B ut we are all thinking through these issues B ut we are all thinking through these issues

Q uestions A bout R ubrics and W riting Q uestions A bout R ubrics and W riting A small preliminary set of questions was sent to a few faculty: 1. Do you use a rubric in any of the writing assignments that you give? 1. What aspects of assignments--the prompts themselves--do you feel are most crucial for students to use, and are the most important to make explicit for them? 2. What aspects of writing assessment do you think we should collectively be focusing on?

S ome R esponses: W hat D o F aculty T hink? S ome R esponses: W hat D o F aculty T hink? A number of faculty do not use rubrics with students, but give them instructions regarding what the expectations are. These could be built into rubrics Those who do use rubrics share them with students with the initial assignment. Regardless of their use of a rubric or scoring guide, the faculty who responded each commented on the importance of specificity in an assignment posing a focused question for the students, making certain they (can) read and understand it some want students to restate the question in the essay. Should questions be the students own, responding faculty want them to make the questions clear, and to be able to build thesis statements and discussion (including argument) around them. Faculty were uniformly concerned with organization, paragraph structure, and many noted sentence structure and vocabulary (both disciplinary and more general use) as critical issues as well.

T hinking T hrough and B eyond the E ssay or P aper T hinking T hrough and B eyond the E ssay or P aper Plagiarism and academic integrity were both mentioned in response to the question about what aspects of writing assessment we should be focusing on. Ian Barnard (English, University Writing Council), who has done work in this area, made note of this ongoing project, which seems an excellent resource: http://site.citationproject.net/ , Rebecca Moore Howard At least two faculty members among those who responded used rubrics for work on Moodle. This work included forum responses regarding class discussions, peer reviews of work posted on Moodle, and critical/analytical reading summaries. Students have written guides to the expectations for these distinct assignments, and they write to them.

T hats all T hat s all better better news news A nd there s A nd there s more more

T here are helpful resources resources a. T he chapter (and references) from J ohn B ean s E ngaging Ideas, 2nd edition a. A list of sites on the next two slides, with discipline specific guides to rubric construction and explanations of the general types: analytical and holistic (and everything in-between) c. O ne example part of our landscape of the A A C &U L E A P V alue R ubrics addresses W ritten C ommunication from the point of view of graduation expectations (on pp. 2 9 -3 0 of the L E A P V alue R ubric piece). d. T he chance for discussion about discipline and assignment for discussion about discipline and assignment- -specific rubric construction specific rubric construction e. T he possibility of if there s interest workshops workshops for developing rubrics an enterprise which, in turn, would have us look carefully at the internal construction of our assignments, and the accessibility (explicitness?) of their goals and objectives.

U R L S helpful to R U B R IC S Two general observations 1. What is the purpose of the rubric to evaluate an assignment holistically or to provide an analysis of how students work addresses delineated criteria. Answers to this question will result in a holistic rubric or an analytical one. Those are two points at either ends of a spectrum, so it is likely that as you look at examples of rubrics you will see not only examples of those two categories, but also a range of hybrids as our own UDWPE scoring guide is: http://www.csun.edu/udwpe/scoring.htm 2. The most useful rubrics are assignment specific and reflect the goals that we have for that assignment. That means that as we design an assignment and prepare it for students, its companion rubric should be developing along with it. 3. These are what I thought were helpful sites; they provide direction and insight as well as some useful rubric examples University of Wisconsin: Learn More: Rubrics https://learnuw.wisc.edu/learnMore/Rubrics.html

M ore Colorado State University (also the home of the WAC clearinghouse) What makes a good rubric? http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/commenting/rubric.cfm George Mason Departmental Rubrics http://wac.gmu.edu/assessing/assessing_student_writing.php#rubrics Ohio State University: Developing Rubrics https://carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/osuwacresources/How+to+Develop+a+Rubric University of Baltimore Business centered http://www.ubalt.edu/merrick/student-resources/rubrics.cfm Some helpful overviews from Minnesota State University http://web.mnstate.edu/instrtech/scmodules/Rubrics/rubrics/rubrics_print.html This site, from SDSU, provides not only justification, but an exercise providing for rubric construction (John Bean does this, as well, in his chapter) http://webquest.sdsu.edu/rubrics/weblessons.htm