Carly Straight

I need to include more formative assessments in my courses in addition to the summative assessments I currently rely on. This will give me more real-time progress on my students' areas of strength and weakness, which allows me to reinforce concepts that they are struggling with. Part of my implementation will simply be asking more open-ended questions more frequently. 

It is important for students to learn skills beyond just their day-to-day tasks. Having the solid foundation of soft skills allows them to prepare for any field they may want to enter and sets them up for success and potential promotions down the line. These are also skills that students need while they are in school, and it is important to build these skills into the curriculum as a way to encourage/require students to begin using them. The more comfortable they are using these skills now, the more natural it will be to use these skills in the future.

Once a rubric is complete, the process is not over. You need to evaluate whether the rubric actually serves its intended purpose. This can be done through feedback from coworkers and students and from the use of a metarurbic. 

It is fine to use already developed rubrics from the internet or from your school's resources as long as those rubrics specifically match the criteria you are looking to grade. If not, you can adapt them to match. A good rubric is fair for all students and would yield similar results if used by multiple people to grade the same assignment.

Make sure the rubric measures what you want them to measure and that you use the appropriate type for the assignment. In addition, create assignments that allow for more complex thinking and problem-solving, and allow students to use these rubrics to self-reflect and to help their classmates.

Rubrics are valuable grading tools because they allow for consistency and clear expectations. However, it is important to remember that they may need revising over time. You must take the time to reflect on your own work, just as you are asking the students to do, and make improvements where necessary. These changes could be in the content goals or the wording of the rubric.

I am an English teacher, so I use rubrics all the time. I will be working to individualize the rubrics more to each assignment.

It is important to keep not just the material in mind, but the "why" behind the material in mind. Adult learners already have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw on, so it is the educator's job to make the learning as experiential and applicable to to the student as possible. 

Adult learners are naturally at a different stage in their life than a child or teenaged learner. They have a more developed sense of self and morality, but they also have a different focus. They are not required to be learning; they are learning for a purpose. As such, it is important to keep their goals in mind when creating a curriculum. There is a specific set of skills that they are looking to develop to help them achieve their goals and settle into whatever stage of their lives they are in, and it is the educator's responsiblity to help… >>>

Adults learners are different because they are approaching education from a different perspective. In many cases, their educational pursuits are instigated by a life event, a desire to change fields, or a chance to advance in their current position. In addition, they may also have outside complications that child and teenaged learners do not have, such as a full-time job or a family that they need to care for. Because of this, it is important to try to remove as many barriers to learning as possible.