625 Week #5 - Oh, Those Valuable Rubrics!

I chose to look at Lori’s resource, ePortfolio rubric.  I followed the URL and played around on the site a bit.  I found that you can’t edit criteria directly on their site, BUT, I also found you can copy, paste, and edit their rubrics freely.  That makes it a valuable resource in and of itself because 1) you have a time considered, developed rubric resource that could conceivably help you plan a learning experience, but also because 2) it’s a big timesaver.  It takes a considerable amount of time to make a high quality, effective and meaningful rubric!  I agree with Lori completely, the rubric is clear and concise and could be adapted pretty easily for any age group.  I also agree with Lori that the criteria should start with Exemplary, then work down the scale to the right.  The highest level of achievement should be at the top left – that’s where start reading, we want to be as positive as we can.  We want our students to assume we anticipate they’ll do well and anything we can do to contribute to that support and encouragement we should absolutely be doing on a regular basis!  I do think that there is a flaw on the rubric and that’s in the points available.  This rubric has no inclusion of how many points each criterion offers, so students don’t have the full picture of expectations.  We want our students to understand the aspects of any learning experience that we feel are most important and so forth.  For example, if I’m asking students to review a performance, I will ask technical questions like was there blocking, did they utilize voice & diction well and the like.  But I would also ask how do YOU feel the performance was, what worked for YOU, what would YOU change, if anything.  Those questions always carry the most weight.  I would recommend this rubric, or some variation thereof, because I am very fond of the idea or portfolios.  I’ve often employed them and careful, meaningful assessment of them is critical to their value as a learning experience!  But even more so, I’d recommend this rubric to someone outside of our class who is seeking greater understanding of rubrics because it makes very clear, very digestibly what a rubric does for both the learner and the assessor.