1. Innovating Rubrics: Inviting Dialogue With and About Student Writing
Caitlin Martin – Indiana State University
#4C15 #F38

2. Background
Research & Teaching Experiences at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
Teaching Experiences at Indiana State University (Terre Haute, Indiana)

3. Rubrics as Instructional Tools
Instructional rubrics are “co-created with students; handed out; used to facilitate peer assessment, self-assessment, and teacher feedback; and only then used to assign grades” (Andrade, 2005, p. 27)

4. Community-Based Assessment Pedagogy
“students take control of all the writing and assessment practices of the class, including. . .the creation of assessment criteria, rubrics, and writing assignments” (Inoue, 2005, p. 210)
“Rubrics and their assessment practices should. . .be sites for reflection as well, so that the rubrics can spur richer ways to evolve as writers, assessors, and theorizers of language (Inoue, 2005, p. 210)

5. Fostering Better Writers
Strong writers are strong assessors
Most students need guidance to effectively assess their own work (Huot, 2015).

6. Easing Learner Anxiety
“Collaborating on the expectations and clarifying them up front could help students understand the objectives of the project and feel more confident about how to proceed” (Adsanatham, 2012, p. 160)
“Inviting students to create the grading criteria may be a way to increase engagement and reduce potential apathy to an assignment” (Adsanatham, 2012, p. 160)

7. How do rubrics invite dialogue with student writing?

8. How do rubrics invite dialogue about student writing?

9. How Do We Make Rubrics Effective Instructional Tools?

10. Dynamic Criteria Mapping
Instructor beliefs and values
Student beliefs and values
Program, Department, or Institution Beliefs and Values

11. Value over Convenience
Number of assignments in a given course
Number of students in each course
Number of total students per semester
Students’ prior experiences
Rubrics (can) become Living Documents

12. Methods for Collaboratively Developing Rubrics
Innovation 1

13. Describe an “A” Paper
An “A” paper is one that meets all the requirements of the rubric. It is clear and well-written. It actually addresses the prompt.
Uses MLA style correctly
Cites sources when they are used
Has a thesis
Has an audience
Grammar

14. Group Brainstorm “What should this paper be graded on?”
Meets the prompt
Effort
Improvement
Argument
Knowledge of topic

15. Explaining Assigned Criteria
Provide students with assigned criteria, ask them to explain what these are
Explain strong/average/weak illustrations of the criteria

16. Connect to Learning Objectives
What did you have to do to complete this assignment? How does it relate to our course goals? What does successfully meeting these goals look like?

17. Collecting Ideas Reading student responses to activities
Understanding their ideas
Negotiating wording differences between students or groups

18. Selecting & Responding
“Why didn’t you use any of mine?”

19. Students Respond to Rubrics
Innovation 2

20. Some responses to a single criterion
“There is a clear audience and purpose for the assignment, which informs the choices the author has made in terms of structure, organization, style, and content”
“I think that my paper reflects who I am as a person and is organized, because I separated the paper by parts. The first part discusses how I act in the morning and as the paper moves on, talks about how I act at night. The style of my paper is a lot different than most styles” (Cecilia)
“the clarity of my audience has hopefully progressed through my drafts and while it may not be perfect it has certainly improved” (Jonathan)
“My audience is peers and those who can relate directly to my experience. My writing is influenced by this seeing as it is casual” (Cassidy)
“I feel like I always write and not to one specific person or group. I just write and I think it shows through in this piece” (Sara)

21. Why? Creates a classroom dialogue Promotes self-assessment
Eases teacher-feedback process

22. Link To Relevant Resources
Innovation 3

23. Why?
Gives students the ability to problem-solve before they submit their papers

24. Final Thoughts
Rubrics can save time grading and responding, but they require a lot of effort in the build-up to be meaningful.
These are only three ways to innovate rubrics that have worked for me—I’m sure there are more, and I’d love to hear your own strategies!

25. References
Adsanatham, Chanon. (2012). Integrating assessment and instruction: Using student-generated grading criteria to evaluate multimodal digital projects. Computers and Composition, 29(2),
Andrade, Heidi Goodrich. (2005). Teaching with rubrics: The good, the bad, and the ugly. College Teaching, 53(1),
Broad, Bob. (2003). What we really value: Beyond rubrics in teaching and assessing writing. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Huot, Brian. (2015, February). Keynote address presented at Indiana State University Assess for Success Conference, Terre Haute, IN.
Inoue, Asao. (2005). Community-based assessment pedagogy. Assessing writing, 9,