Grading and Rubrics

Grading Strategies

Instructors will want to think about whether their grading strategies are reliable, valid, fair, transparent, and that what they are assessing aligns with the stated learning objectives. Ideally, the percentages and criteria for each assessment will be clearly conveyed to the students on the course syllabus and/or in other materials, such as assignment descriptions.

While grading practices may vary across disciplines and departments, there are a few points instructors might wish to keep in mind:

• Provide students with choice in the assignment, or on what questions they need to answer on an exam (e.g. answer two out of three questions) tends to enhance motivation, and may allow students to demonstrate more readily what they have learned
• Align assessments with learning objectives. For example, if a learning objective focuses on students developing critical thinking skills, but students only take exams that focus on recall, than there is a mismatch between the kind of thinking the instructor wants from his or her students, and the kind of thinking that is actually being elicited in the assessment.
• Vary the types of assignments (exams, projects, homework etc) to enhance motivation and persistence, using both formative and summative assessments
• Distribute the overall grade percentages across multiple assessments
• Weight assessments appropriately in terms of percentage of grade as well as time on task. For example, more important assignments should be weighted more heavily
• Offer constructive feedback on student work in a timely way.
• Break large projects into smaller components, with each component being assigned a specific percentage (for example, a final presentation might include literature review, outline, first draft, and oral presentation)

In addition to using grading rubrics, instructors who are teaching with someone else (another instructor, or teaching assistants) might find it useful to employ:

Using Rubrics to Assess Learning

A rubric is a tool designed to:

• assess complex learning criteria consistently and objectively, whether there’s just one grader or multiple graders;
• measure student progress over time;
• have a concrete reference point for sparking teacher-student dialogue about performance expectations and areas for improvement.

The analytical scoring rubric is the most common form of rubric. An analytic rubric allows the user to understand the degree to which an outcome is being fulfilled, as opposed to providing a simple “yes vs. no” assessment. However, in the case of a rubric, each point along the scale is clearly defined and described.

Questions to Consider When Creating Rubric

1. What are the specific tasks of the assignment?
2. What are the learning outcomes you are trying to achieve with this assignment?
3. What is the purpose of the rubric? Is it meant to provide formative assessment (student feedback) or to provide a grade (summative assessment)? Is it qualitative or quantitative?
4. What areas do you wish to assess? Using neutral language, decide on descriptors that show a full range of skills and knowledge, with clear indicators of each level of performance.

Examples of Rubrics to Assess

• Group projects
• Written work
• Critical thinking
• Online discussion boards

Assessing Learning with Quizzes and Exams

When carefully constructed, quizzes and exams can effectively assess different aspects of learning, often including such domains as critical thinking, clinical reasoning, creative thinking, application of ideas, integration of theory and practice, problem-solving, and decision-making. The nature of the questions (e.g. true/false, short answer, open-ended, solution) will depend on the kind of learning that the instructor seeks to elicit in his or her students, ideally focusing on questions that get at higher order thinking, rather than reproducing content. The University of Michigan's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching offers a helpful set of guidelines for designing and grading exams. Instructors might also find it beneficial to refer to the Bloom’s Taxonomy.

In assessing open-ended responses, instructors might use a rubric to ensure consistency in grading. Instructors might also draw on Biggs' Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO), which maps onto Bloom’s Taxonomy, to assess student responses (see document).