Bonni: [00:00:00] Welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed. In this episode: still not sold on rubrics?

Production Credit: [00:00:06] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:19] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students in this episode.

Bonni: [00:00:43] I want to start and go way back when I first started teaching to the most beneficial book I probably read for the first couple of years, The Introduction to Rubrics.

Bonni: [00:00:54] And Dave is joining me today by the way again in our second episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Dave, thanks for being here.

Dave: [00:01:00] I apparently I did OK on the first episode. I’ve been invited back for a second.

Bonni: [00:01:03] In case you didn’t listen to the first one. Spoiler alert: He’s my husband.

Dave: [00:01:08] I’m glad to be your husband even more so than I’m glad to be on this show.

Bonni: [00:01:12] So when I first started teaching in higher ed I was actually I don’t remember it might have been my second year or so was introduced to the idea behind rubrics and found because whenever I have trouble with. How do you do something what’s the best way to do it. I often go to books.

Dave: [00:01:29] You do. And you were so excited about this Rubric thing with this book for ever and ever and ever. And I was like what on earth is this rubric thing about. Because you kept telling me about rubrics, rubrics and rubrics. I was like what on Earth is even a rubric.

Bonni: [00:01:44] So the the book is Introduction to Rubrics and the subtitle is great. An assessment tool to save time grading. By the way that’s going to be a key point for anyone listening that would like to save time and is not using rubrics right now convey effective feedback and promote student learning.

Bonni: [00:02:03] And there’s a link by the way if you’d like to check this book out on Amazon there is a link on the show notes that’s at teachinginhighered.com/2 so feel free to go there to comment on this episode and to have a link over to that book.

Bonni: [00:02:19] So I read it and it’s a wonderful thing it’s actually been republished since I read it this was the early 2000s that the first publication came out. But I saw that they have redone it again and the last couple of years so probably worth me even getting the latest copy because it was really great.

Bonni: [00:02:34] And so my first introduction to rubrics were ones that were done really well and I spent a lot of time doing them and really thinking about them but what I’m seeing now unfortunately is the landscape has changed to where so many institutions not just at the higher ed level but also high school and even below that are using rubrics a lot but a lot of really bad rubrics and a lot of rubics that are not thought out well.

Bonni: [00:03:02] And so our students are sometimes getting accustomed to the fact that they’re not going to give them a good idea that the expectations are and that they’re not going to give them feedback.

Bonni: [00:03:13] And then a lot of times our faculty aren’t really taking them very seriously either. And I know for myself I have this debate somewhat of a regular basis with the colleagues that I work with regularly and some of them really have a lot of resistance to them.

Bonni: [00:03:27] I would actually say the majority of them have a resistance to using rubrics and the first reason for resistance tends to be what I call the Supreme Court version of it and it’s well I don’t want to tell them what it is I’m looking for. I’ll know it when I see it.

Bonni: [00:03:46] And I don’t know if you remember that Dave. That was back in the Supreme Court talking about pornography or what’s considered pornography. And one of the justices was.

Dave: [00:03:55] Oh I don’t remember it very.

Bonni: [00:03:57] Might have been Scalia, Kennedy?

Dave: [00:03:59] No it’s someone who’s not on the court anymore. I don’t I don’t remember the details but I’ll know it when I see it.

Bonni: [00:04:08] [laughing] I have a link by the way to the actual law journal that goes through that case if anyone’s interested in reading more about it was actually interesting article that I found.

Dave: [00:04:16] But it’s a great analogy for how a lot of times grading happens in higher ed with you know that that kind of a philosophy of like OK well you don’t know what’s right. When I read the paper.

Bonni: [00:04:30] And I just think that is so unfair to our students and yes if you’re early in your teaching and it might take you a while to be able to exercise enough those communication abilities for expectations.

Bonni: [00:04:43] But it should be one of those get a rubric out there and then refine it over time. It will really help you so rubric essentially by the way a rubric is going to to articulate what is expected out of an assignment.

Bonni: [00:04:55] So a rubric is is going to have different degrees of quality. If if it’s just one of those that says you need to have an introduction and a conclusion need to be an APA format you need to have five pages or what have you.

Bonni: [00:05:12] That’s not a rubric that’s a checklist. If it’s a binary thing that’s a checklist that’s that is one way of communicating expectations but not as refined as a rubrics or rubrics going to say. It could be three different definitions of quality could be for could be five and that’s a lot of thinking between what would the lower end of the quality spectrum look like.

Bonni: [00:05:34] All the way up to the highest and it does take an enormous amount of time to create high quality ones. Once you’ve created high quality ones it seriously reduces the time you have to spend articulating an assignment and then also giving your feedback because it’s all there and pretty thought out for you.

Dave: [00:05:56] And I should mention I have come full circle on this. So you introduced me to rubrics because I didn’t even know what they were and then explain I was like Oh yeah I think I’ve seen something like that before.

Dave: [00:06:05] And now I teach classes at the master’s level and so when I started designing classes and so by I incorporated rubrics in there and now have seen how that is really helpful in saving time and being much more effective in migrating and also communicating to students exactly what it is that I’m looking for as far standards.

Dave: [00:06:29] But you’re right it takes a lot. It does take time to do it well on the front end and I think that’s probably a stopping point for a lot of faculty is just not being either willing to put in that effort and time or not knowing what to wear to really start with building a rubric and that’s that’s that’s hard.

Bonni: [00:06:46] The second objection that I hear the most often is people that say well there’s so many people when I teach in business and management and so there’s so many people when they go out into the business world who aren’t going to communicate their expectations to them they have to get used to it.

Bonni: [00:07:00] They have to get used to not knowing what the managers are looking for and just working under those conditions. And I think that’s like you being a psychologist psychology professor and teaching your marriage family class and. Well there are so many bad marriages out there they end in divorce terrible communication. So you really need to not be a good communicator as.

Dave: [00:07:25] Don’t bother getting to be a good communicator it’s not going to continue any good anyway.

Bonni: [00:07:30] Exactly. So I think that’s quite not what our students need more from us than that they need to have us. Yes communicating perhaps better than their managers one day will to help build their skills in these key areas.

Bonni: [00:07:44] And so part of that are I think our role is really being good at communicating expectations and not having there be so many surprises around the grading process. I see rubrics as a teaching instrument.

Bonni: [00:07:57] So it helps them know what good looks like on a particular assignment around a certain learning outcome and that it helps them.

Bonni: [00:08:06] So it helps them know what to aim for and then to have good feedback when they hit the mark or when they don’t. So let’s dive in Dave to looking at a framework around rubrics and I’m going to actually use a frame work from a guy named Harold Jarche who is an expert in personal knowledge management.

Bonni: [00:08:25] And we’ll be talking about personal knowledge management down the line in future episodes. But one of the things he describes is a way of cultivating knowledge.

Bonni: [00:08:33] So I’m going to use his way of cultivating knowledge specifically now around rubrics so he says we seek knowledge we make sense of knowledge and then we share that knowledge. So to talk about how do you seek out different rubrics how do you make sense of them and really have them make the biggest impact to you.

Bonni: [00:08:54] And then how I would encourage people to share their rubrics. So to start out with as far as seeking I did mentioned it’s really tough to make an effective rubric. But the good news is there are so many fabulous ones already out there. I can’t I can’t even fathom that but so many people are so gifted at this and then so willing to share what they’ve come up with as well.

Bonni: [00:09:18] So a couple of them that are in the show notes that you should go over and check out or the AACU value rubrics and these are from the. Oh I’m forgetting the acronym AACU it’s the academics. It’s like the representation of all professors in America he’s got it there.

Dave: [00:09:40] Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Bonni: [00:09:43] I really should have known that one. I panicked under the pressure. Rhe value rubrics help you articulate around a lot of what would be the general education type of overarching learning outcomes for a college degree.

Bonni: [00:09:59] But it wouldn’t even matter if you’re teaching in a specific type of discipline you’ll likely find something there that you can make use of and the nice thing is you can adapt any of their rubrics.

Bonni: [00:10:12] So it’s a good starting place around some key skills for example writing skills oral presentation skills etc. etc. So some really broad areas and then you can take them and make them specific to your given assignment and the skills you’re trying to build in the knowledge.

Dave: [00:10:30] And there are some elements of rubrics that do stay similar in a lot of. I mean think of like writing a paper or something there are some rubric elements that I’ve used in every rubric and I know for me one of the things that was really helpful as I finally learned what a rubric was and then like oh this would actually be helpful and I do some teaching.

Dave: [00:10:47] I looking at other rubrics was helpful as a starting point of thinking okay what would I want to include what would I not include in that I looked at a bunch of yours which was a great starting point I was like oh this is good.

Dave: [00:10:59] Oh I think I want to tweak that for my class because I you know I’m expecting a slightly different standard in this particular area. So seen examples that are good ones to start off with is a really good place to start.

Bonni: [00:11:10] So you know when you see it.

Dave: [00:11:12] Yeah exactly.

Bonni: [00:11:13] And by the way there are tons of bad rubrics out there too so I’d encourage you to use the show note links because the a lot of these are good and they’re good starting places so at least you know what great looks like when it comes to a rubric.

Dave: [00:11:25] I know what great looks like that’s why I married you.

Bonni: [00:11:27] Oh there you go.

Dave: [00:11:28] There you go.

Bonni: [00:11:29] Oh so sweet. So Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything is a really amazing resource. Kathy Shrock is tends to provide more resources toward a high school type of teachers. But I have found her stuff is easily adaptable to higher ed.

Bonni: [00:11:45] She’s absolutely fantastic and she has a whole section on rubrics and if you go up there you’ll your mind will just be blown. What are rubrics lots of different definitions examples of rubrics links to tools to help you create your own rubrics. She’s got it all up there so that’s a wonderful resource for you to check out.

Dave: [00:12:05] And since it is the Guide to Everything it covers all educational levels.

Bonni: [00:12:09] There you go. There you go. And lastly on the Seek part Wiggins who I know Wiggins as the author of a book called backwards design and he coined that phrase thinking about when we design a course we think about the end and we work backwards from there. That’s hence the term backwards design.

Bonni: [00:12:33] So he is a phenomenal blogger and has really some tremendous things to say about rubrics and as I was going back and rereading. He’s got a whole series on rubrics thinking about just how we really do do a disservice to our students when we don’t communicate well when we don’t really think about communicating our expectations.

Bonni: [00:12:56] And to him the importance of delineating between different standards of quality is something he really emphasizes. So he has in his second post in his series where he has some ability for us to go out and find seek out different sources for rubrics.

Bonni: [00:13:11] Next up we have sense. So if you go out and you find a bunch of rubrics My guess is if you’re anything like me you’re not going to find the exact rubric that you’re looking for at the very moment you go down sit down to write it.

Bonni: [00:13:24] You might just be out there browsing you find one but you don’t need it now but you just want to hang on to it. So it’s the idea of making sense of the tools that we’re finding. And so a lot of making sense is saving things and creating them in a system that you’ll be able to find them later on.

Bonni: [00:13:43] So for me I save a lot of web links in this case rubrics using a bookmarking service called Delicious. Delicious, like the food, is delicious only in this case the rubrics are delicious so you go to delicious.com and you can create yourself an account there and install a button in your toolbar.

Bonni: [00:14:04] So that when you’re on a site and you want to save something like a rubric you just click on that button and type in some tags and so I have. For anyone who visits the show notes for this episode I have my delicious bookmarks for rubrics and I’ve saved at least 100 of them over time and they’re all searchable too so you can go to that link for my bookmarks for rubrics and then within those bookmarks you can even do a more refined search for what it is you’re looking for. So I encourage you to check that out.

Dave: [00:14:35] I love these links sharing services because you can give as much access or not to 2 other people so you for example keep all of yours public and so people can go online and see all the things you’ve saved and your bookmarks and access it. That’s really cool.

Dave: [00:14:50] I use a similar service called Pinboard. One of the ways I use it. Not specific to rubrics although I should be saving rubrics information too. But any time there’s two or three classes I teach regularly at at a university.

Dave: [00:15:04] And so I take the class code and any time I find an article that I think would be relevant to that class I just tag it with that class code. So when I’m then the next time I’m teaching that class I pull up the list of all the articles I found that you know maybe three months ago I saw somewhere but I’m never going to remember again.

Dave: [00:15:22] But then you know I’ve got a whole list by the time the class goes next time and relevant. You know timely things that are going on in news media and online that are relevant to that class conversation. Learning objectives and that’s a really helpful thing to do.

Bonni: [00:15:37] And then you can get even more refined with your tagging because a link could have more than one tag on it. So Dave could have it for one of his classes. He could have that tag for his specific class number. And then also take it as a rubric.

Bonni: [00:15:52] So if you were thinking oh this is a perfect example of a rubric I can modify for X class. You could even make your time that much less in the future when you actually go about trying to find Rubix for that class.

Dave: [00:16:04] Most of the things I find online have four or five tags I’ll take the topics because most of the work I do in the world is not teaching in higher ed it’s business training and you know producing content so it’s it’s you know I’m looking for things for lots of different resources I use as many tags as I think are relevant for that particular media item I found.

Bonni: [00:16:23] So when it comes to rubrics we want to be able to use them well so that because that’s the big thing is saving time once they’re produced. Then you go about being able to give feedback that’s actually meaningful back to your students.

Bonni: [00:16:40] But a lot faster too because we don’t have to say the same thing over and over again. And so the way I have found actually works for me for creating rubrics is to create them within Evernote. Evernote is a online cloud based notebook service meaning get it on my phone on my iPad on my computer wherever I am.

Bonni: [00:16:59] I can access it and so I’ll start there within a note. You can have a table in there so I’ll just go and have a table that has maybe four columns. The first column might be the attribute being described such as formatting and then the next column over would be excellent and then mediocre in the not so mediocre and my descriptors go in there.

Bonni: [00:17:26] I like using every note the formatting isn’t perfect when I’m in there but if you ever do some serious writing it’s good to get your ideas out and not worry about formatting so it’s real simple it’s not perfect but then I can copy and paste it into word.

Bonni: [00:17:41] And then adjust the size of my columns and actually make it look really good and so then I tend to take them over to word and then I save them as PDFs for students to be able to view them in advance. I don’t say them as words said PDFs for students.

Bonni: [00:17:56] But I save that word file and then later on when I go to actually provide students feedback to the students. I oftentimes will in Microsoft Word highlight in yellow whatever they actually scored and then save that as a PDF.

Dave: [00:18:14] And some of the grading systems they’ll like turn it in for example. Actually has support for rubrics so you can. I’ve done this with classes I’ve taught recently as I have produced the rubric and then and turn it in. I’ll go ahead and copy and paste each section of the rubicund there and turn it in will even match it to points and all of that.

Dave: [00:18:33] So you can set it up once and then every time might teach that class then. I mean I’m always making small changes to the rubrics but I’m not making major changes so I can just go in set it up and then right away you can just click on how people know where people fall on each of the rubrics and calculates the grade automatically and give audio feedback. It’s just amazing what you can do.

Bonni: [00:18:54] Turnitin has support for rubrics. Blackboard has support for rubrics Moodle has support for rubrics so if you use a learning management system at your institution it’s pretty likely that it has support for rubrics and as Dave said that makes it so easy to be able to just go in and click click click and it does all the math for you.

Bonni: [00:19:14] So if you said formatting is worth X percent of the grade and this is weighted according to however many points there there’s lots of different ways you can work out the math but you work out the math in advance and then it does all the mathematical tabulations for you.

Dave: [00:19:31] And you know I think that one of the objections probably faculty have to do something like that is like, “Oh it’s way too automated.” I want my grading to be more personalized and my feedback.” For me, I find the exact opposite by automating some of that part, not automating but making it more structured.

Dave: [00:19:46] It allows me then to really put the effort into grading, into the personal feedback because I always I always do it virtually and I leave a 3 minute audio comment on almost everything I grade and so like you know how did you score the grammar section?

Dave: [00:20:00] I don’t spend a lot of time talking about this. I indicate that the rubric and then I can really have a conversation with that person about what I really thought about their assignment beyond just what’s on the rubric and so that I find really opens up a lot of doors to invest more time into making it personal. People really like that.

Bonni: [00:20:16] Yeah and I have to add so many comments from undergraduates all the way up to the doctoral level who say, “Being unable to hear your voice made such a difference to me in receiving that feedback and it being that much more valuable to me.”

Bonni: [00:20:29] And that’s really an interesting, to me, commonality they all seem to have just that sometimes… I mean the thing we’ve all gotten the email that we think was intended one way and it turns out they didn’t mean that at all and so just being able to hear our voice even if it’s some tough feedback I think really helps the communication transfer in the caring way with which we actually mean it we really do want to give you feedback on your work and how to make it better in the future so I think that’s a helpful thing.

Dave: [00:20:58] Also probably a whole other show but it’s…

Bonni: [00:21:00] Yeah.

Dave: [00:21:01] It’s amazing to me how often people tell me that they’ve never had a faculty member – people at the master’s level – “No one’s ever recorded an audio or anything like that.” With today’s technology it’s so simple to do.

Bonni: [00:21:12] A colleague of mine used a tool called iAnnotate which is an iPad app and actually would you look up to see if it also is on another platform while I sure talk about it so it gives you the ability to produce all sorts of feedback. It highlight handwritten notes on their page of the students and also a lot of audio feedback as well.

Dave: [00:21:40] It says get it on Google Play which makes me think it probably has Android support but I don’t I don’t know the Google system well enough to know.

Bonni: [00:21:47] That is correct.

Dave: [00:21:48] Cool.

Bonni: [00:21:49] So at any rate we are getting a little bit off topic but in terms of just the feedback I do think that Dave’s right there can be that object objection of oh it’s so impersonal but really it frees up without saying the same thing over and over again to actually provide the richness of your feedback.

Bonni: [00:22:08] And the one other thing that I started doing is using a screen tool called tapes that lets you record what’s happening on your screen. But there’s a lot of them out there so there’s there is even.

Bonni: [00:22:24] SnagIt is one that I’ve used for some years where you just click and drag across part of your screen and then are able to create a little movie of what’s there so I’ll do that with the rubric I’ll click and drag over the rubric after I’ve scored it and talk through it with a student.

Bonni: [00:22:40] And I was just great in some infographics with my doctoral students and I could bring up their infographics and talk through it with them on the screen and then bring up the rubric and show them where I highlighted and why.

Bonni: [00:22:51] So again with that richness of feedback again tapes is not the only application that will do that for you but that’s just one that will allow you to do simple screen casting. Capture your audio and whatever’s happening on your screen.

Bonni: [00:23:05] It’s almost like a great adult version of show and tell and then we can really again provide that much better feedback for students and then the last piece is to share. Just like I mentioned so many people share their rubrics and I would encourage you to do so.

Bonni: [00:23:21] I’d encourage you to be blogging about them to tweet about them and to really be as generous with the community of people out there in higher ed as people have already been before you started creating rubrics.

Bonni: [00:23:33] And to that end I plan on doing that and be sharing the rubrics I come up with my various classes on the Teaching in Higher Ed blog so hope that you’ll join us over there.

Dave: [00:23:45] I should give you some of mine to share with people too either of the links here or on the blog.

Bonni: [00:23:49] Sounds great and now is the part in the show where we recommend an EdTech tool. And I was coming downstairs I had already texted Dave saying hey are you ready to record. And he said Yeah.

Bonni: [00:24:02] And the name of the company changed so I caught it just in time. So it used to be called Remind 101 and it is now called Remind, Remind.com.

Bonni: [00:24:12] This is a wonderful service that originally looks like it was designed more for the elementary grades because it involves communication with not just students but really with parents.

Bonni: [00:24:23] But it’s a communication tool that allows you to send out text messages to remind people about stuff to remind students and again to communicate with parents that kind of thing and it’s evolved over time and really become so integrated with my teaching.

Bonni: [00:24:38] So what happens is I go up there and I have an account on remind dot com and I create a class let’s say it’s introduction to business and I’ve got that class up there. Then when my students come the first day of class I have a little code that they just text to.

Bonni: [00:24:54] That’s all they have to do with their phones is just text to this code and then text them back asks for their name and I don’t ever see their cell phone number they don’t ever see my cell phone number. But throughout the semester I can send use in the app or on the web it’s either one I want to.

Bonni: [00:25:13] A quick reminder to any of my classes just a couple of taps on my iPhone or a couple clicks my mouse on my browser and they just started adding support for pictures which just really expands the possibilities there even more whether we just want to capture a memory from the class or something on the white board or a PowerPoint or even a handout could be sent that way as well.

Bonni: [00:25:35] So thats remind.com would encourage everyone to check it out. And and it’s just an easy way to communicate with students without them having your cell phone number.

Dave: [00:25:44] I am looking forward to trying that in a future class I’ve been putting off implementing that. But it just sounds so cool that gives people so many options to people to connect and get plus announcements up. Would you like me to share one.

Bonni: [00:25:58] Yes.

Dave: [00:25:58] OK. So my resource – I’m actually to go back to tapes because I think you captured a part of what tapes is great for what is really cool about it. There’s a lot of apps to screen sharing screen casting stuff is I think it’s Mac only by the way. So.

Bonni: [00:26:17] This is two-for-two now for you.

Dave: [00:26:20] But it puts a little thing in your menu bar on a Mac. You click on it. It literally starts recording your screen you select the part you want and as soon as you’re done it gives you a link and you e-mail blink. That’s it. It does all of the uploading the files they toasted on their old service.

Dave: [00:26:34] You don’t have to upload something to YouTube or a server somewhere. It is really simple to use. That’s why it’s such a powerful tool and it’s great if you need to show someone how to do something so I’d definitely recommend it for that.

Bonni: [00:26:46] Yeah a student could just email you and say, “How do I do this” and you instead of trying to write it all up, you just show them. And it copies it to the clipboard and off you go you’re off and running.

Dave: [00:26:56] Speaking of off and running we have a date with some kids in a little bit here so it’s time for us to get off and running.

Bonni: [00:27:03] In one minute.

Dave: [00:27:04] Exactly one minute. Good timing.

Bonni: [00:27:04] Nothing like going right up to the wire. Thanks so much for listening today to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. I am Bonni.

Dave: [00:27:13] And I’m Dave. And you can find us on teachinginhighered.com/2 for the show notes.

Bonni: [00:27:20] We hope to go up there and comment. Let us know what questions you have or what you’d like to contribute to the community. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week.

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