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Case Study
Santa Ana College Takes Grading Online
6/6/2007
"The beauty of the Rubric program is that is really does create performance-based objectives," Howe said, "because it lets you know exactly what you will be graded on."
The future of the Rubric program, Howe predicts, is for managers in the workplace who need to measure performance as objectively as possible.
The online product is free for those who register and agree to share their Rubrics with others, so Howe, who has his own website, isn't paying anything to use the product.
He's also benefiting from the Rubrics created by other instructors worldwide. Sharing Rubrics with other instructors is helpful, because the up-front work in creating them can be challenging, Howe admits. Although most instructors have a basic idea in mind of their expectations for a particular assignment, Rubric forces them to be more specific. "You have to sit down and think it through and write it down, and that's not easy to do," Howe said. Seeing what others have done in the same subject area makes it far easier. At the very least, sharing Rubrics can help instructors with the initial objectives for an assignment.
The publicly shared Rubrics are categorized by subject matter, such as chemistry or English. Howe said they offer "a great learning experience for all of us… You can go in there and see how other people are grading the assignments they're making, and what the criteria are."
For example, Howe's rubric on a management case project, which can be viewed here, specifies:
The student will develop a performance problem case that he or she is currently experiencing. Once the performance problem situation is properly defined, the student will then apply the subject matter learned in class to create a plan of action to deal with the performance problem. The case is based on 100 [percent] which will convert to 100 points.The assignment then goes on to specify exactly what's required in each of seven sections, how each will be graded (from "not acceptable" through "poor," "fair," and "good") and how many points will be awarded per section.
"The students love it, because they know exactly what's expected of them," How said. "It's not a guessing game.... [They know that] this is what I'm going to hold your toes to the fire for."
Linda L. Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif.
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