Rubrics

I think everyone who works in higher education has come across rubrics. They are matrices with all the marking criteria on one axis and the marks you could get for it on the other, and then all the cells filled out. So, for instance, for an oral presentation you might have the ‘delivery’ marking criterion, listing that in order to get 100% for that, you need to speak clearly and engagingly and with appropriate vocabulary and suchlike. And if you get progressively less clear, engaging, etc., your mark will drop via 80% and 60% towards a fail mark if people can’t hear what you’re saying, your sentences are mostly consisting of ‘ehm’ and ‘like’, and you’re boring everyone to death. And then that for all criteria. You easily end up with a 8x 6 matrix, and 48 cells to fill out. 

The sheer number of cells to fill would already put one off. But I have a bigger problem with this. It tends to be easy to fill out the extremes, as there are not many ways in which you can be either totally exemplary or totally rubbish. But there are so many ways in which you can be in between. Just take, for example, the introduction to something like an essay. A perfect introduction, in my view, first provides some background to the topic, gives its relevance, and then formulates a clear research question including how it will be answered. The background should be sufficient to make the reader understand the research question. And then all of that needs to be well-written. 

What about a lower scoring introduction? That could be limited background, spurious relevance, unclear research question included how it will be answered, and all that not very well written text. But it could also be that it has excellent background and relevance, beautifully written, but there is no research question formulated. Or everything is present but it is written in such wonky language it is very difficult to follow. Or so many other permutations! And that is my problem with rubrics. And that's why I am reluctant to use them.

 

An example rubric, from Gutiérrez and Juárez-Peñuela, HOLOS 2019

 

Every year, the students want more guidance on what is expected of them. And every year, the external examiners say that we should use rubrics. And now I have given in. I have been writing rubrics for my entire dissertation module. They are a bit conditional! I use the words ‘may’ and ‘might’ more than average. Because you just don't know. The background might be insufficient. The research question might be badly formulated. Or maybe they are both only just ok. You don't know!

You could argue that that just means I need to have more categories in my rubric, but could you imagine? If you specify everything in such small compartments? You would already need five categories for the introduction alone. How many would you need for the abstract? The results? Discussion? I don't think it would be workable. So I did what I think is right. I will try to find a volunteer to go through them to see if they can suggest some improvements.

And once I started, I suppose I should go the whole way. And make them for all my assignments. It sort of means I won't have to be bored this summer! Even though there was no fear of that anyway…