Rubrics

http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/thinking/docs/rubricar.htm

Last class we spent the majority of our time discussing rubrics. I thought making rubrics that judged cookies was a great way to demonstrate just how unfair or misleading rubrics can be at times. Even though each group tried to make a rubric that fairly judged a chocolate chip cookie, the score of each cookie according to the rubric, did not always reflect which cookie was better. This activity helped me to realize that rubrics are not always the best tool to grade students’ writing. However, they can be used properly if they are structured correctly. Personally, I have mixed feelings about rubrics. From a student’s perspective, a rubric can be helpful because it allows the student to know exactly what they need to do to receive a high grade on an assignment. I've found that sometimes having a rubric can clarify what is expected in the assignment. On the other hand, as I student I have also found that rubrics can be confusing, or worded so that they sound generic to any assignment, and do not help to clarify the assignment at hand. From a teacher point of view, having a rubric can be one way to help explain what they are asking students to do. They can also help when the teacher is grading.

            I related the lesson I learned on rubrics last Tuesday to an event I attended a couple of hours later. I went to a dance lip syncing competition that was between the sororities and the fraternity on campus. At the event, one of the sororities did a very well executed dance on a song from the movie Pitch Perfect. Even though this dance was performed well and was mostly in sync, this team did not place. I suspect that this is directly related to the rubric that was given to the judges. The dance was scored from four categories: attire, choreography, originality and synchronization.  Even though the dance looked very synchronization and clean cut, the dance was not that original because the majority of it was from a movie. This hurt the team and caused them to fall a little short in the final scoring. If the rubric was based simply on which team the judges think did a better job, without these specific categories, I think this team would have scored higher. So this brings me to a question: Are rubrics always fair? Regardless of the original intentions of the rubric I feel that rubrics often are not fair, and can cause teachers to grade an assignment either higher or lower than it really deserves simply because of the terminology of the rubric.