I have found rubrics to be very beneficial in the classroom. Although they are indeed time consuming to create, the outcomes are well worth it. I find they really help the students better understand what is expected of them. It also helps me when grading to ensure I am fair as well as provide appropriate and benefical feedback.

Online Instructors have the same task as other professionals. We will always encounter change. This includes change in technology. We must adapt to these changes and make sure that we are informed and educated and utilize these changes to our advantage.

I prefer a hybrid rubric that includes some of the same criteria each time, but has one or two areas that are specific to the assigned task. I also may change the weight of criteria depending on what my teaching has emphasized before a particular assignment.

There are a few points that I consider regarding assessment. The rubrics are a wonderful function in LMS. This provides for consistency in the grading process, and gives a level of equity for each student to make the learning and assessment methods cohesive. However, we must ensure that the rubric point allocations are appropriate. I would recommend that the point spread is even rather than having a large gap in the allocation in order to provide the best assessment. Finally, the course content or subject matter has a great deal to do with which assessment is appropriate. Virtual simulations, for example, are a wonderful tool for mathematics, whereas essay tests are wonderful tools for English.

I create addition task specific rubrics for my students. I beleive that providing a task specific rubric provides supplmental information for the student to complete the assginment. When I'm grading papers, it will refer a struggling student to the rubric I created for that specific assignment. It's a challenge sometimes to present the rubric and not induce the feeling of information overload for the student.

Rubrics are wonderful tools to let students know what measures to take in order to get the grade they want.

I believe that assessing students is important so that you can help them in areas they are struggling with.

As an instructor that is in her 40's, I'm wondering if the new technology will become too much for older teachers.

As I read through the responses, a thought popped into my head. I will admit that I teach for a couple of universities and some of our rubrics we can not change. This makes me wonder how evaluating a rubric will work if you do not have the authority to change them. Would you pass the information along to the university for them to change and would they actually change it?

I have used rubrics in the majority of my classes, at several universities, for discussion questions and written assignments. Even though I have provided feedback that expands upon the criteria, it sometimes seems as if the students still do not completely understand their grade or the reason why points were taken off. As grading a written assignments is subjective, how can we get students to have a better understanding of what is missing in their assignment? To be honest, is there anything that we can do if we are providing comments and feedback to support the rubric already?

I am a professor at a Career College and I am a HUGE proponent of using rubrics in the classroom. In fact, I refuse to teach a class unless the class is properly equipped and outlined with rubrics to help keep the students on track. I look to these documents and actually refer to them to my students as my 'contract' with them for every assignment. I try to impress on them that the rubric should be used as a checklist for them to complete before turning in an assignment. It usually takes one set of project grading and feedback for them to become familiar with my style of grading and offering feedback on their projects, but I have found that the rubrics have played a significant role in the success of students in my classroom.

Authentic assessment are assessment where the students are ask to perform real world task to demonstrate how well they can apply the knowledge and skills they have learn in the classroom. I teach “Payroll Accounting” and one of my “authentic assessments” is to have student prepare an employee payroll given the number of hours work, the rate of pay, the number of dependents and the marital status. Students have to calculate gross pay, all the taxes associated, net pay and then file the necessary forms with governmental agencies as well as writing a check to the employees with the Net Pay showing all the deductions. They find it very interesting and meaningful.

According to materials read in chapter 2, “Summative assessment occurs at the conclusion of a lesson, project, unit, or course.” It is an evaluative measure design to measure students’ learning relative to the objective/outcome of the course. If the objective(s) of the course are not met then a correction process is worthwhile. Formative assessment is to monitor students’ learning to provide ongoing feedback. It is a tool to determine students’ strengths and weaknesses and to make immediate correction where necessary. Formative assessment has no point value as compare to summative assessment, thus formative assessment are intermediate goals to reach the overall objective/outcome measure by the summative assessment.

We live in a world where the impact of technology is an integral part of our lives. We learn with technology, pay bills, communicate and entertain ourselves. The younger generation is heavily influenced by technology in a manner that changes the way they retain information. Easy access to the internet via computer or smart phones redefines how we learn stuff. I teach “on ground” and many times when I ask a question the student just access the internet to get the answer. I think that the younger generation knows how easy it is to access up-to-date information, thus it kinds of defeat the idea of retaining knowledge through learning. Apart from the smart phones, most of my student comes with an IPAD or TABLET on which they do their class work. In conclusion, in addition to the way we learn, technology impacts “how much” and “what” we learn.

As an online professor how do you go about involving your students in giving feedback to your rubrics? I know sometimes I have trouble getting feedback just on the live chats.

I was just wondering how does everyone get feedback from their students that their rubric was good, bad, etc?

How often do most of you update your rubrics? My classes run every 5 weeks so I just wanted to get an idea how often I should do it?

The younger generation seem to understand and expect technology changes. What can we do to help create a better balance for the older generation or non traditional students?

Conclusion Faculty is not currently trained or required to provide the substantive, multilevel feedback proposed here, which is apparent when analyzing the spectrum of faculty comments which, in most cases, range in scope from a few words to two sentences. While faculty does have its exceptions, the majority of adjuncts and full-timers do not offer substantive, rubric-based gradebook comments which, if left to their current rate of inconsistency, may adversely impact student retention in the short-term and enrollment numbers in the long-term.

How do our students feel about this type of feedback? "I have often wondered about the weight given to different aspects of our assignments over the course of my entire tenure with AIU. It was nice to be able to see it in black and white, before grading. I would honestly like to see all of the instructors incorporate this information into communications with the students. I think it helps in deciphering what the key points to the assignments actually are. " " The new components help you to gauge where you stand and what areas you need to work on. The assignments are broken down in a way that helps you to focus on your weak areas." " They were helpful to see where the student excelled in the assignment as oppose to an overall score. Minimal feedback does not provide the student with the knowledge of what needs to be worked on." "I have never received such detailed feedback from any Instructor while at AIU. Please don't get me wrong, I've received meaningful, solid feedback... however, nothing the likes of what you've provided! Thanks for the detailed feedback!"