Criteria and Validity
By what criteria should performance be judged and discriminated?
Where should we lookand what should we look for to judge performance success?
How should the different levels of quality, proficiency, or understanding be described and distinguished from one another?
Rubrics
There is an underestimated role of rubrics in the learning process, since we teachers do not make the most of them. Everyday pressures, namely, deadlines, administrative tasks, or simply routine, do not allow us to realize that rubrics are such an important tool for teachers as well as for students.
It is fundamental in the design of any rubric to know the group that is going to be assessed. There is no point in providing our students with a rubric in which the teacher intends to assess something the students are not able to fulfill.
As some of the characteristics of rubrics I can mention the following:
• They help teachers save time when assessing, since by using rubrics we know straight forward what to focus our attention.
• They make it clear for the students what we really want as teacher for a final product or during the process
• In this respect they can focus on what is important and leave what is not useful to acomplish the task
Holistic v/s analytic rubrics
We teachers normally tend to assign a single score for a whole assignment, yet it is not quite clear for the student to identify the nature of his/her score. Holistic rubrics lead students to misinterpretations, as they compare their results with their classmates’. Therefore, they might think that if the nature of their scores are the same if they happen to get the same mark.
Analytic rubrics, on the other hand, help students get a clear perspective of their performance. By making use of this kind of rubrics, we isolate traits which easier to mark for teachers and easy to undersatand for students.
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Hi Lorena,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the fact that rubrics can be of great help for us and we don't use them as often ans as efficientle as we should.
I have to be honest and tell you that I am not an expert at all, in fact during my years of study, Inever had someone training me on how to use them.
I think it would be great to devote at least a class to discuss their use ...don't you think?
Hi Lorena!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the idea that rubrics are a very important tool when assessing and, as you said, not only for the students, but also for us. A rubric helps to see the assessment scenario much clearer. However, this clear panorama is not so considering the students’ point of view because sometimes the students do not know what has been assessed and more importantly, HOW it has been assessed. Therefore, we have to consider that rubrics must be a help not only for us but also for the students, and then we have to present that “criteria” in order to make our students aware of the WHAT and the HOW about the assessment issues.
Best
Angie
It is fundamental to ask ourselves the questions you have just written Lorena.
ReplyDeleteIndeed rubrics can be of help for we can save time by using them, we can set clearly what we want our students to produce, and these can be oh help in discriminating and leaving aside what is irrelevant for the task we want to assess.
Wiggins states that ‘quality of understanding and quality of performance is what teachers are usually after when using rubrics’. Rubrics evolve with use, he says. Thus, by analyzing rubrics then we are to make the necessary modifications in order to refine them and make them more accurate, effective and valid to make assessment through.
It is essential of course when designing rubrics to know the group that is going to be assessed, as you say, but also, being realistic about designing them in terms of what students will be able to perform or a specific objective to be achieved, so as to get valid evidence of understanding, and not assessing ‘mere retelling’ as Wiggin says.
Dear Lorena:
ReplyDeleteThere are many factors which influence teachers in the role of judging performance. However, there is not point to think of them as obstacles if our aim is understanding. It is time to stop being mediocre blaming external factors for our incompetent role as judges.
It is compulsory to provide students with clear interpretations of their performances in order to make them think and reflect on what they are doing well or badly. In this respect, rubrics are tools which really might help teachers in the pursuit of such complex task. As you mentioned in your post, analytic rubrics are the ones which make the difference.
Nevertheless, teachers are still using holistic rubrics thinking that the score is the most important sign of understanding. What is a worse, students think the same mainly because we teach them to think that way.
I still think that rubrics are a double face instrument. On the one hand, we have this very positive side which helps to clarify and determine very clear the goals meant to be tested. Also they can be very specific about the expected outcomes. However, I believe these instruments are really easy to be biased and at random choise. If I'm taking a test, and I just get pissed off because any reason, or I'm just on a rush, the instrument looses all its validity, no matter how reliable it might be, it's teacher's bias which distorts the validity of the instrument. If one is politically correct and conscious about our own acts, validity increases quite a lot.
ReplyDeleteThe use of rubrics can be of great help, I have used them this year and as everything it has advantages and disadvantages. som advantages I can mention are: they are fast to correct, you just identify the correct column and sum all the point and write the final mark, in oral presentation you can do it in the very same momnet your student is presenting, so the mark is inmediatelly and you can give him/her the necessary feedbakc. On the other hand, the disadvantage is that preparing a rubric means time consuming, you need to have clear your objectives to prepare the necesary rubric that covers all the item you want to evaluate.
ReplyDelete