My husband is a High School AP World History teacher. This is his second year teaching and his first year teaching this class. In his teacher ed class, the use of rubrics was encouraged so he was using them for his students. At the beginning of the year, he was grading and looked frustrated. I asked what was wrong and he responded, "I don't know if I should give them rubrics because they all keep getting perfect scores! I don't want to be seen as an easy teacher" I asked him why that was a bad thing?! After all, the goal is to have students reach the predetermined outcomes. Once I put this into perspective for him, he realized that just because everyone is getting an "A" he wasn't an easy teacher, he was an EFFECTIVE teacher! If students see that as easy- that's a good thing!
A good rubric is specific, only contains 5-7 categories, has a good amount of white space (as to not overwhelm the student), and is designed to help students achieve the goals you have set. I have always had a hard time with writing rubrics. I try to follow the guidelines above but my students are always able to interpret my requirements in a way I never thought of. This makes things difficult to grade. They are not showing they have learned the information I wanted them to learn but what they have done is not incorrect. How should I assign points? Should I just grade the student down because they didn't reach the outcomes I wanted them to know or do should I accept my shortcomings writing the rubric and not let their grade suffer? Then there are the times that it's difficult to choose between where the student fits on my scale factors. Perhaps the "answer" doesn't belong in the good category, but it doesn't quite make it into the next higher category. So one should i choose?
One way I can avoid these pitfalls, I should limit my scale factors and make them appropriate for what is being assessed. For example, when the Quality CNTRL group was designing our rubric, our scale categories were in question. To decide which ones to use, we had to determine if our rubric was for fully online course or a blended course. Was it to evaluate a course for publishing or was it to evaluate a teacher's design of the course? We started with the scale factors of Novice, Intermediate, proficient, exemplary, and master. After deciding we were evaluating a course and not a teacher we decided to change the names of these categories. We also decided it would be easier to assess if we had fewer categories. We ended up with a rubric with 3 categories, Poor, Average, Excellent. Writing my rubrics this way may avoid how to assign points as fewer categories make each one more definitive.
When I look back at previous rubrics, I find I am telling students how they will be evaluated instead of describing what I'm looking for. This can lead to misunderstandings because evaluative statements can be interpreted many ways. If I want to make sure my students are giving me the outcomes I want, my descriptions in each category should be descriptive instead of evaluative. If I describe exactly what they want, they are less likely to misinterpret my instructions and I won't have to decipher partial points or debate between what to do when what they did when it wasn't INcorrect but not what I wanted.
In the end, by learning how to evaluate an online course and by creating a rubric to do so, I was able to determine ways I can improve my own rubric writing.