5.9 | The Benefits of Rubrics Transcript
How Rubrics Can Inspire Your Students' Best Work
Welcome to Byte-sized Canvas! I’m Helen Graves and today we’re going to aim our pedagogical microscope at the topic of effective rubrics. Item C5 of the OEI Course Design Rubric calls for the use of grading rubrics (or descriptive criteria) to be included with assessment activities. A well-done rubric is a wonderful tool for both students and instructors.
Rubrics help students visualize what they’re aiming for before they even start working on the assignment. They help you in grading systematically, consistently, and quickly. I often hear instructors express sentiments along the lines of, “Oh, I don’t use rubrics because they don’t work.” It’s very true that a cursory rubric won’t be useful. A well-thought-out rubric, on the other hand, clarifies for students exactly what you’re looking for and what they need to do to get the grade they want. And in Canvas, it makes the task of grading sooo much easier for you!
Another benefit, from my experience, is that many instructors who’ve begun using well-developed rubrics report a significant drop in questions from students about why they got the grade they got. No more complaining emails. Wouldn’t that be a nice little reprieve? Let’s get back to the challenge of developing a truly useful rubric.
If a rubric is too complex and nitpicky, it can hinder student creativity. By the same token, if it’s too rudimentary, a rubric doesn’t give enough guidance or structure. That’s the part I want to talk with you about today. I get to peek inside a lot of courses in my work with instructors through the OEI’s Course Design Academy review process. All too often, I see rubrics that look something like this: At first glance, it actually looks OK. It’s got multiple criteria and multiple ratings. But let me tell you why it’s not an effective rubric.
The descriptive criteria are all lumped together over here. Then the ratings just quantify how much of the criteria was met. As a student, the rating of “criteria partially met” doesn’t give me any information about what I did wrong. It doesn’t help me do better the next time around. And with this rating, I have no way of knowing which elements I got right, and which ones I messed up on. Here, was it my bad grammar or my citations that docked me points? I don’t know. So, this is not an effective rubric.
Here’s another example that’s better. It has distinct categories with the actual descriptive criteria associated with each
rating. So, if I receive seven instead of 15 points for Organization, I know exactly why. The rubric is still somewhat cursory though. I would also argue that some of the language could be framed in a more positive way. We all learn better when we feel encouraged, not criticized. So, instead of saying, “The logical sequence is weak,” this rating could say, “The ideas presented would benefit from a stronger logical sequence.” Different ways of saying the same thing but one gives me something to aim for
while the other just makes me feel stupid.
This last example is a much more effective rubric both for you in grading and for your students in meeting expectations. The criteria are nicely separated and not lumped together. The ratings give very detailed qualifications for each point value. The tone and language used are positive and encouraging. Think of your rubric as “pre-feedback.” When students have access to the kind of structured guidance rubrics offer beforehand, they understand how they’ll be evaluated on an assignment and can prepare accordingly. And you don’t end up writing the same comments to students over and over again.
While it does take time to craft effective rubrics, they provide you with an easy-to-use, skills-based tool that can quickly supply students with valuable feedback and save you time in the long run.
That’s it for now, folks! Until next time, this is Helen wishing you a Canvalicious day!