Rubrics

I like rubrics because in my long career as a student I often did not know what the teacher expected. I would ask and get vague answers. 

Rubrics should tell students what is expected. Students want to know how long an answer is required. Have you ever asked that question and received an answer like: “As long as necessary” but then, when the answer is submitted had points taken off because it was too long or too short? I have. 

Students should also know what is how they will be graded. I have found that including examples of good and poor submissions from past classes really helps students. 

Common rubric mistakes:

• Adopting a rubric from an online site that does not fit the assignment.
• Too detailed.
• Being so inclusive that it makes the assignment time consuming for the teacher to grade.
• Going from low to high instead of high to low in the scale.

I do not think rubrics are the complete solution. For several years I was a reader of grants. There were usually 4-5 people on a team, and we had a rubric, and we scored individually first sand then came together and compared our answers.  Although we all had the same rubric our scores often were very dissimilar. So, rubrics yes, but also written feedback to students. I think every rubric should include a column for teacher feedback, explaining why the grade was given. More work for the teacher? Yes. More fair to the students? Definitely.