AR.3 Article Review - Rubrics

CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 5, 197–203, Fall 2006

Approaches to Biology Teaching and Learning Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners Deborah Allen* and Kimberly Tanner† *Department of Biological Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716; and † Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132

In an attempt to drive higher order thinking and deeper understanding of course content, rubrics provide a way for students and teacher alike to have clarity around expectations and performance objectives. The rubric allows students to understand the standards clearly and improve their performance on the tasks. For teachers, it helps to set a guideline for assessment that has clearly defined standards, making grading more objectifiable and less opinion-driven.

In designing a rubric, one must consider first the following questions: 

“What do I want students to know and be able to do?

“How will I know when they know it and can do it well?”

“This is essential not only for developing the rubric, but also in confirming the choice of the particular assessment task as being the best way to collect evidence about how the outcomes have been met.” 

Allen and Tanner discuss the differences between constructing  analytical and holistic rubrics and the complexities of creating the right one to obtain the desired evidence that outcomes have been met.They mention online rubric sites, such as Rubistar that can be used to generate rubrics. After this, they talk about analyzing the data collected from the rubric. I found this to be a little academic, but appreciated that they talked about using double digit rubric scores to analyze a student’s responses to an essay prompt about ecosystems. I think that this is a better approach than a regular multiple choice test, because it reflects higher order thinking and connections to the real world, whereas the multiple choice test is static and flat, offering a lot less information about the student’s actual learning other than rote memorization.

The article concludes with talking about why it is good to use rubrics, from both the teacher and student points of view. Although it takes considerable time to create a rubric, it is a great assessment tool, especially given changing teaching strategies. Rubrics can help to ensure that students are being assessed properly and that the educational outcomes of the teachers are met. It also provides a tool for the student to reflect on their learning, and for students to know the expectations of the learning experience up front which can help them to succeed.