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Online Faculty Development Course
You are probably familiar with rubrics as an educational tool. Your students are very likely to know about and look for rubrics, since they've been popular in secondary education around the world now for several years. They may seem like a chore to create and improve, but a finely honed rubric, the product of semester-after-semester iterations, can provide students helpful feedback while saving you time grading.
Here you see a typical "analytic" rubric, with attributes (D2L calls them criteria) listed down the lefthand column, and levels across the top. In each attribute or criteria, the instructor chooses a level of performance, or "indicators,"as described in each square to the right of the attribute heading.
Perhaps, for example, a student's essay was a concise, well-supported argument brilliantly summarized in a single thesis statement, so she received a level "4" for "Focus on Topic (Content)." However, she clearly rushed through the final editing stage and had too many spelling errors, so she achieved only a level "2" for "Grammar & Spelling (Conventions)."
Don't Reinvent the Wheel
Don't Reinvent the Wheel
If you use rubrics, over time you'll probably craft good ones based on your experiences. But if you need a new rubric, why not ask around or search the web to start with? Especially if it's for something common, like class discussion, many rubrics are probably available on the web. For example, this rubric is for classroom discussion, but could be easily adapted for online synchronous or asynchronous discussions.
Rubrics can be especially helpful in managing asynchronous discussions. If you can efficiently supply more, but still meaningful feedback to students on their posts, you can keep your own workload manageable while making the most of asynchronous discussion.
While building a rubric is not a requirement for this week's sandbox activity, review the videos below to see what's involved in deploying and using rubrics.
Building a Rubric
Building a Rubric
Attaching a Rubric to a Discussion Topic
Attaching a Rubric to a Discussion Topic
Grading a Discussion Topic With a Rubric
Grading a Discussion Topic With a Rubric
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