Expectations and Explanations

Tech and Tips Tuesday

Expectations and Explanations
High expectations are the key to everything. -- Sam Walton 

In this week of exploring how to best maintain academic rigor and standards in our online courses, I would like to take the time to discuss rubrics. Rubrics are assessment tools, or score sheets if you prefer, that outline exactly what it is you are looking to find within student work. These tools help provide clarity in communicating and explaining your performance expectations to students. 

Rubrics are not only useful to educators when determining assignment grades, they are also helpful to students as they complete the work required. If provided with a rubric ahead of time, students can assess how well or poorly they have met the requirements for the assignment. 

Some rubrics provide quality parameters, stating what is necessary to earn a particular grade like this one  created by Erica Schaapveld on RubiStar.

Another example of a rubric set up with clear expectations for each element of the assignment is a blogging rubric by LangWitches.org. 

Other rubrics simply outline expectations and point values, providing open space for teacher comments, like this one I created for an Organizational Communication case study assessment.

Either way you choose to set them up, these grading guides allow students to clearly understand assignment expectations and to do their best to meet them. A good practice is to post the rubric along with the instructions to give students a complete picture of the performance levels possible. 

Creating rubrics is fairly easy using Microsoft Word and the Table functions under the Insert tab. However, there are free online rubric creators, too. Christopher Pappas published a list of six at http://elearningindustry.com/the-5-best-free-rubric-making-tools-for-teachers. Whether you create them yourself or find useful rubrics others have created, I encourage you to use them with every assessment, outlining your expectations as clearly as possible. Students will feel more confident, easing your workload.

I would love to hear about your favorite rubrics. Feel free to share examples and suggestions.

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See you then, 

Melynda

@Melynda_Conner

#TCBHigherEd