What if I told you there was a tool that, when used well, can clearly articulate to students what is important in an assignment, give timely feedback to students, reduce your workload, and ensure fair and consistent evaluation? That’s right! It’s time to talk about rubrics (one of the best tools in Blackboard!).
Rubrics can clearly communicate the expectations on an assignment as well as chunk it into smaller components for students. The feedback within a rubric should help students both understand where they are at as well as see the levels of mastery they can strive for. To further explore rubrics read Kiruthika Ragupathi and Adrian Lee’s “Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education”. One thing that stood out to me in their work is that effective rubrics can get students to look at the process of learning and not just the product.
Both Ragupathi and Lee’s writing and Anders Jönsson and Ernesto Pandero’s “The Use and Design of Rubrics to Support Assessment for Learning” advocate for using rubrics not just from instructor to learner but also for learner self reflection and peer feedback among learners.
Further, Jönsson and Pandero provide research based recommendations for designing your rubrics (or if you are feeling reflective, redesigning your rubrics). Questions they discuss:
- Does each component have to have a score?
- How is the evaluation of the rubric highlighting the learners’ strengths and weaknesses?
Do not let your rubric bloat or lay dormant. Rubrics are strongest when tightly aligned to the learning outcomes the assessment is designed for and are to communicate clearly to students. Consider a Single Point Rubric for your assignment, detailed here by Jennifer Gonzalez. Feeling particularly brave? Consider co-creating a rubric with your students!
