Instructor Guide and Notes Sharing and discussing your Rubric with students is a good idea so that you can all come to a common understanding of what is expected for the assignment and how students’ work will be graded. Students should be able to visibly see a link to the Rubric at the beginning of the assignment in web-enhanced, hybrid, or fully online courses if a course management system is used (e.g., eCollege, Sakai, etc.). Rubrics make the process of grading more objective, consistent, and quicker (in the long run). Rubrics can also be used when reviewing any grade appeals. When grading: Pick three students’ papers at random and grading them using the Rubric so you get a better feel for it. “practice” Focus on the mastery level (category) on each criterion before the other mastery levels (i.e., Accomplished, “Exemplary” Developing, Beginning-Unsatisfactory) when evaluating and grading each student’s paper. The Exemplary mastery level articulates the highest learning outcome. If the rubric doesn’t do what you want, adjust it, as needed. For example, modify mastery descriptions to add for your “context” research paper assignment, if needed. However, be careful to maintain a similar of criteria (i.e., should be a “weighting” “content” significantly higher weighting than the of the assignment). Also, be aware that the assigned for each mastery level “mechanics” “points” have been mathematically calculated and proportioned as follows: overall, Exemplary is ~ 90-100%; Accomplished is ~80-89%; Developing is ~ 70-79%; and Beginning-Unsatisfactory is ~ 0-69%. This Rubric will work with both grading systems and grading systems. For percentage-based grading “percentage-based” “points-based” systems, it is important that the overall points add up to 100 points to work properly with the Gradebook in the course management system (e.g., eCollege, Sakai, etc.). It is recommended that instructors include a of an paper so students have a frame of reference before undertaking “model” “Exemplary” the assignment.
Instructor Guide and Notes Sharing and discussing your Rubric with students is a good idea so that you can all come to a common understanding of what is expected for the assignment and how students’ work will be graded. Students should be able to visibly see a link to the Rubric at the beginning of the assignment in web-enhanced, hybrid, or fully online courses if a course management system is used (e.g., eCollege, Sakai, etc.). Rubrics make the process of grading more objective, consistent, and quicker (in the long run). Rubrics can also be used when reviewing any grade appeals. When grading: Pick three students’ papers at random and “practice” grading them using the Rubric so you get a better feel for it. Focus on the “Exemplary” mastery level (category) on each criterion before the other mastery levels (i.e., Accomplished, Developing, Beginning-Unsatisfactory) when evaluating and grading each student’s paper. The Exemplary mastery level articulates the highest learning outcome. If the rubric doesn’t do what you want, adjust it, as needed. For example, modify mastery descriptions to add “context” for your research paper assignment, if needed. However, be careful to maintain a similar “weighting” of criteria (i.e., “content” should be a significantly higher weighting than the “mechanics” of the assignment). Also, be aware that the “points” assigned for each mastery level have been mathematically calculated and proportioned as follows: overall, Exemplary is ~ 90-100%; Accomplished is ~80-89%; Developing is ~ 70-79%; and Beginning-Unsatisfactory is ~ 0-69%. This Rubric will work with both “percentage-based” grading systems and “points-based” grading systems. For percentage-based grading systems, it is important that the overall points add up to 100 points to work properly with the Gradebook in the course management system (e.g., eCollege, Sakai, etc.). It is recommended that instructors include a “model” of an “Exemplary” paper so students have a frame of reference before undertaking the assignment.
research_paper_rubric_generic.docx