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.

What does the grade mean?

I teach a class for Education grad students in our School Library Certification program called Technology for School Library Media Centers (SLMC). You can read my tweets about grading final papers on Twitter.

Here are some i-ruminations.

I have 2 students who are particularly good writers. They are engaging. They're thoughtful. They know how to follow my rubric.

(Synopsis of an article, 30%; reflection on the article or its topic, 30%; application of a related idea to current or future practice as a School Library Media Specialist; value added, i.e., some identifiable extra bit of work that a peer might not be doing such as researching the topic online, 10%.)

Every year I can recommend students for Pennsylvania School Library Association's Outstanding Student Librarian Award. Here are the qualifications:

• Maintains a 3.0 GPA (or equivalent) in their major.
• Displays outstanding leadership qualities and has potential to be a future leader in PSLA.
• Demonstrates an interest in professional action.
• Dedication to the school library field as a profession.

In preparation for doing this next Spring, I've been paying close attention to all of my students and these 2 excellent have risen to the top.

I have several other students who are not such good writers. A couple I've even referred to our writing center for help with grammar, punctuation, idea development, etc. One student whom I referred did not impress me at all with her first paper (of 4) . By the 2nd paper, it was clear that she needed a referral. She took my suggestion gamely and sought help for the last 2 papers. Last night I did a once-over of the final paper and I was thrilled. Something worked. Yet when I think about students whom I'd like to commend for this PSLA award, she doesn't come first to mind.

Why not? After talking to her about her earlier papers, I knew that writing was not something she considered herself to be good at. But she is a practicing school librarian who just needs a master's degree to her name. She claims she's a doer not a writer, so she taught herself how to use her new SMART Board. Well that's good, isn't it? Show's potential? Writing skills shouldn't limit her. Indeed, the fact that she took my suggestion to get tutoring help sets her even further apart as an achiever than natural writers.

What may be related (or not) is that she came into the class with few technology skills. Students like her tend to write about topics that, though fascinating, have gotten a lot of attention already and hence can become trite for a professor to read: blogs, wikis, social networking.

Naturally, I can't ethically and don't grade students based on what they bring into the class technologically. I grade them on the rubric which deals with the topics; both basic and advanced. But if more novice students with weaker writing skills write about subject matter that can seem trite to me, how will they stand out as potential award recipients? This student wrote her last paper on website evaluation. Those excellent writers wrote on open source applications and smartphones for accessing web content, respectively. The latter topics are atypical and they wrote insightfully. The former topic is more basic but her writing improved drastically. So who gets a commendation? Beats me.