Rubric, what rubric?

One of the challenges of the Tech for School Library Media Centers I teach has been determining what my rubric should be for grading assignments. Originally (last year, that is), it started as a simple 33%-33%-33%. 33% of the grade would be synopsis of the article selected for the assignment, 33% would be reflection on some aspect of the article, and 33% would be for describing application of some element of the technology featured in the article. That seemed pretty straightforward to me. I just needed to help the students understand what I meant by application: It was to be an explanation of how they would use what they had learned from the article. Since few of the students were practicing school librarians, I told them to imagine how they would apply the technology, recognizing that there was at least value in that exercise.

After the first paper last year, I realized that I wanted more in that rubric. I wanted to see something extra that they were doing to enhance the learning in the assignment. If the article was about a web technology, then that extra effort needed to be consultation of another article or perhaps of a website or even a person. Somehow that effort needed to distinguish the work from one fulfilling the basic requirements of the assignment. So the rubric was now 30/30/30/10 for synopsis, reflection, application, and effort. (Effort would eventually become Value Added to avoid the confusion that arose from people who thought they had put a lot of hard work into their assignments--not the same thing.)

This rubric seemed to serve the assignments well the first year. This year, though, I spent a lot of time getting the students to devote 1/3 of their writing efforts to each part. Students were tending to spend more time on synopsis and less on application. So I kept telling them that if approximately 1/3 of the grade was for each part, then they should be devoting 1/3 of the length of the paper to each of those parts.

As each assignment passed this year, I also began noticing other elements that were important that students needed guidance on. I started grading on the quality of the writing, the adherence to MLA's citation style, good grammar, and good punctuation.

Another element that became more prominent was the length of the papers. Although I had set page limits and font style and size, a fair number of students were ignoring those requirements. One kept generating papers 20% shorter than everyone else and a couple were writing ones up to 50% longer.

About halfway into the course one of my students complained about the rubric being too general. I couldn't understand what she meant at the time, so I decided I wouldn't make any changes. I did start comparing notes with other professors.

What became increasingly clear was that quality writing was not as implicit as I thought--neither was following certain assignment requirements. Suddenly, the need for a more specific rubric became clear. I decided not to rewrite the rubric for this year since all the writing was now done. Any changes I could add to the syllabus for next year.

In my class today, however, a student asked for a detailed rubric for the final project. Not a written paper, but a library and technology website, I admitted I didn't have one. This time I was more ready to put something together. As each of 4 groups of students worked together during our class lab time, I collected notes on what I noticed I was liking and not liking. I immediately began making comments and suggestions. Based on my observations and those about the writing assignments, I began formulating hard numbers. I have yet to assign weights. I'll get the actual percentages in place this week and will have the rubric done in time for everyone to use. In this case, better late than never. And next year's class will be none the wiser.