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The Power of Rubics - Part 1 Transcript

Stella Porto

Program Director

Graduate School of Management and Technology

Published: 0 2004

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Assessment-feedback-rubrics

Presentation by Dr. Stella C.S. Porto
Part I, Introduction: Defining Holistic Assessment
Transcript of Video, with PPT images

Graduate School Faculty Meeting
February 28, 2004

Throughout the reading and research I've done on the topic of assessment and grading rubrics, I’ve put together some motivating thoughts, all related to how we understand assessment and what is our philosophical mission when we do assessments with our students. I’m going to set out these thoughts... just so we can reflect on them a little bit. This is one of the motivating thoughts:

What I’m going to say here, I know you all go through it. Even if you use the “As” and “Bs” or [if] you use the numbers (I usually use the numbers just because I’ve a technical background — you have to provide numbers.)... But, you know, you go through this thing, “Oh, this person is 85, and this other one is 87,” you know, all this little nit-picking. I hate doing that, because I have to go through that feeling every time. It’s painful to do grading in the end, because you’re trying to find what’s wrong, you know, what went wrong — to take away micrometer points.

This is not actually something you’re told to do directly, but are because of the standards that you’re shown from the institution that you work with. But at least if you [have to] follow those standards, you still can have another philosophical understanding of the process.

The other [motivating thought] is

All these thoughts are very much related to one another. But we always should remember that when we are teaching, we’re teaching for the learning — right? — and the testing is just the way that we can use to assess.

All right. So, first here is the definition of performance-based assessment.

Actually, it's something very easy to understand.

1. It's assessment that you do to a product.
2. You’re going to evaluate students in a real world context. (This relates a lot to the kind of students that we have here at UMUC.)
3. And you want to measure how can students apply the skills that they have learned.

This is performance-based assessment.

We will see that in performance-based assessment, you can either — and that will appear when we discuss rubrics — you can either do the assessment through the full product in a holistic sense, or you can try to take this product, do an analytical division of this product into multiple tasks, and have standards for each of these tasks. Any of these ways is good. And depending on what the final product is, one or another will be suitable, but both of them are good ways to start building rubrics.

This table actually tries to make a comparison of how traditionally we understand grading, and how that differentiates from the concept of assessment.

• First of all, grading, which is the scoring, is summative in the sense that you provide something at the end and there’s no in-between. An assessment is formative in the sense that throughout the process, you are providing something that the student can use and change during their learning and produce new products in a better way. So, there’s the feedback piece, which is important. This is a list, really, of a traditional way of seeing how you can deal with assessment in your class in a more holistic sense that relates to that first initial thought of teaching to the learning and not teaching to do tests. So, what we want is to have formative assessment. You’re doing assessment all the way through; you’re providing feedback all the way through.

• You want something that can build diagnoses. So, you create activities and assessment tools throughout your course such that through them you can see where the students stand and what are their difficulties, and not only provide a grade in the end.  [You want to] be able to identify, for example, that the problem this student has is in writing; it’s not really the content, but it’s writing. So, if you build your tools correctly, you’re able to make this diagnosis.

• We're not judging the student. It has to be private.

• It's possible (we don’t have the means to do that very well here at UMUC), depending on the technology, that you can do certain things anonymously. If you’re not using [an assessment] for grading, you don’t really need to know who the person is. You can have anonymous assessments, just so you know where the student is and the student doesn’t feel so exposed in terms of his performance if certain assessment is done anonymously. Sometimes he’s more free to say things and to express himself.

• In assessing, we have to be specific, so instead of talking about the student as a whole, you can pinpoint certain aspects that the student could improve.

• Your feedback has to be suggestive in the sense of giving him or her the means to change throughout the course. So, that relates very well to the formative aspect.

• And it has to be oriented towards your objectives. All of this has to have clear, from the beginning, what is the expectation and what are the goals. So, you can say, well, it's not about the content, but it's about the expectation that I have in terms of competencies and performance in the beginning of the course.

Every time I talk about grading from this point on, it's not the right side of the table, but the left side of that table: the grading in a holistic sense, in the sense that I am considering all of that assessment entails.

• Grading in this holistic sense includes having to tailor tests and assignments — any kind of assessment tool you’re using — to the learning goal of the course. So, you make them very explicit and in a way that the students understand very clearly what they are.

• Establish criteria and standards, so we're teaching for the goals. We're helping students acquire the skills and knowledge they need. So, the goals have to be very well related to the needs of the students so they’re motivated.

• Assess in a formative way; assess students over time, several times, and provide feedback so they can use that during that period of time in the course.

• When we define expectations and the activities that we will use to measure this performance, we also should be addressing student’s motivation. So, you can have boring assessment activities and you can have interesting activities in which the students are engaged. And they’re also learning through the activity, not only showing what they know.

• Give feedback that results not only in terms of what they did wrong, but also what they are doing right. This is really common when you’re providing grades is to come back to the student, say well, you know, I gave you this grade because this is wrong, this is wrong, and this is wrong. And sometimes we don’t highlight what that student did really well and he or she should continue on doing not only in that course, but sometimes in other courses is in the future. So, also have the feedback about both sides, successes and mistakes.

• One thing that is important is to have the topic of assessment as something that you do discuss with students. And actually, this is one point that I have started to do just recently. The first time I used rubrics, I had the rubrics to myself only to help me do the grading and provide useful feedback. And then I recently started showing the rubric and allowing students even to make comments about the rubric or ask questions, so it’s really clear to them what is expected, what does that term that I put in there in the rubric really mean.

• And using all of these results that of the — I mean I think that rubrics or any kind of assessment is something that evolves in time, so the experience of students in one term will probably make you change and evolve your assessment tool, rubric standards, in the future.

Go to transcripts of sections

• Using Rubrics, Part I - Introduction: Defining Holistic Assessment
• Using Rubrics, Part II - Defining Rubrics and their Benefits
• Using Rubrics, Part III - The Processes of Developing and Using Rubrics
• Using Rubrics, Part IV - Two Examples (Porto), and References

Go to Videos of sections

• Part 1 : Introduction: Defining Holistic Assessment (10:20 mins.)
• Part 2 : Defining Rubrics & their Benefits (11:54 mins.)
• Part 3 : Process of Developing and Using Rubrics (7:48 mins.)
• Part 4: Two Examples by Dr. Porto, plus References (6:10 mins.)