Thinking About Rubrics for Feedback

Published: 2024-01-18 10:05 AM

Category: Assessment | Tags: standards based grading, feedback, sbg

A new semester means a fresh gradebook and more time to think about how I'm actually giving feedback and reporting progress. I've been a user of the four-point rubric for a long time and, of course, I'm rethinking that entire approach. There are some benefits to the four point scale which are outlined particularly well by Robert Talbert's post on point everything toward feedback (my emphasis):

The biggest and most central problem is that marks are often used as an implicit form of feedback. But as feedback, number- or letter-based marks are not helpful. As I wrote in my previous post, the primary purpose of feedback is iteration. In order to be helpful, feedback should convey information back to the learner about their work that will be useful in crafting a next iteration of that work.

My standards rubric is essentially the EMRF model Robert discusses, but I've started wrestling with how to use a single point rubric as a method of driving students forwawrd. Single point rubrics remove the "score" component and would allow me to indiciate what a student needs to improve (they have not met the standard) as well as what they can do to expand (go beyond basic implementation or demonstration) their understanding.

The four-point rubric gives me some leeway in how to calculate that score because each item is entered numerically into the gradebook. At the end of each unit, I calculate a score out of four as the most recent mark + the highest mark divided by two. I like this because recent effort counts and students always benefit from their best performance, as opposed to a traditional average where they're always penalized for their worst performance.

I struggle with calculations because the last performance should be the most indiciative of skill development, but with so many conflicting factors involved in assessment, looking at growth over time is important to me. A single point rubric would make the grading faster and more specific to the student but would make my collection and analysis of progress more difficult. Alas.

I do have a site where students can track their progress over time and look at accumulated feedback. The idea is that they are checking that (for their digital assignments at least) to make sure they're making progress. On my end, I generate a simple sparkline to show trends. That isn't shown to students, though. Perhaps adding that small indicator would help me help them reflect on their own growth. Removing the point values entirely would allow them to focus on making their line move up rather than adding scores.