Rubrics

This assignment was about developing rubrics for online grading.

I was worried about this as an assignment because as a rule, I hate rubrics.  I even hate the word rubric.  I had never heard this word until I took my first education class, and I felt even then that it was a made up word.  I now know it comes from the terms for burnt ocher which was used to gloss old manuscripts.  Thus, a rubric was a commentary on old manuscripts and a rubric for grading is a commentary on student work.  Knowing that the word wasn't purely educational jargon put me somewhat at ease with rubrics, but I still didn't like them.

Even in my traditional classroom, I almost never grade by rubrics.  However, I have been teaching AP classes for several years and the "Scoring Guidelines" that they give for free response problems have put me even more at ease with rubrics.  This may just be because I prefer the more descriptive "Scoring Guidelines" to the jargon of "Rubric."  At any rate, I was not looking forward to the assignment.

Since I had to make a rubric for this assignment, I decided to do so for an assignment that I recently gave students for my online environmental science class.  Here is the assignment I gave my students.

You will use Prezi to make a presentation.  In your presentation, you will show and describe three food chains from the temperate deciduous forest (We live in a temperate deciduous forest).  Be sure to include producers, consumers, and decomposers in each food chain.  You will then show how these food chains combine to make a food web.

To make my Rubric, I chose to use the easy rubric maker from Annenberg Learner.  I chose it because it sounded easy and because I have used Annenberg Learner for many teaching activities in my classes and I trust the site.  The rubric maker was really easy.  I chose the categories to be graded from a list and clicked create.  Here is the rubric it made for me.

For being a general rubric generator, I was really impressed at how well the descriptions fit my assignment.  To use it for full effect though, I'd have to add a bit of description to the rubric.  Let me just use the "Organization" section of the Annenberg Learner generated rubric as an example.

4 Logical presentation of ideas; all parts contribute to a strong central idea.
3 Most ideas are connected; some parts don't contribute to the central idea.
2 Selects correct format for the assignment but uses it inconsistently with many errors.
1 Ideas have little connection to each other; there is no strong central idea.

This can be tweaked very simply.

4 Logical presentation of food chains and food webs shows a food web is composed of many interconnected food chains
3 The idea of food chains is connected to food webs but the idea that a food chain is but one path in a food web is not clearly established.
2 Correct format for food chain and food web presentation but the logical connection between food chains and food webs is not drawn or not made explicit.
1 Food chains and a food web are presented but not connected under a central idea.

I really like the simplicity of the Annenberg Learner Rubric maker.


my students.

Utilizing one of the resources discussed above, create a rubric that integrates specific criteria for an assignment and also affords the instructor ample commentary on the student’s product. Make the rubric available in a post in your blog.

After completing a blog post that meets the requirements of this quest, submit the link to your post in the Submission Form at the bottom of this page.