Teaching Tip: Rubrics for Teaching and in Blackboard–Some Resources

Scoring or grading rubrics are a way to analyze, assess, and provide feedback to students on assignments.  By providing a set of descriptive categories and criteria for evaluating student work, not only is grading made more efficient, but students are also provided with guidelines as they plan and complete their assignments.

For an introduction to rubrics, you might want to review the following articles and web resources:

  • Mertler, Craig A. (2001). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(25). http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=25    (Note: While Mertler provides some examples at the end from K-12, the principles and step-by-step procedures enunciated here are relevant for higher ed as well. )
  •  Moskal, Barbara M. (2000). Scoring rubrics: what, when and how?. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(3). http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=3
  • DePaul University Office of Teaching, Learning and Assessment webpages on Assessment and Rubrics—short explanations and additional resources at http://condor.depaul.edu/tla/Assessment/AssessmentRubrics.html

 

While rubrics can be constructed as separate documents and housed with the syllabus and other course information documents, with Blackboard 9.1, we also began to have a way to connect rubrics so that they can become part of the Blackboard grade center processes.

The following are resources for learning how to deploy rubrics with Blackboard’s grade center:

“How-to” quick guides:

  • Using Rubrics
  • Creating a Rubrics Content area

both available at our faculty tutorials page at http://sps.cuny.edu/ofdit/blackboardtutorials.html

Video tutorials:

Rubrics—covers setting up of rubrics, https://tegr.it/y/kf06  (this is housed on our tutorials page as Bb Essentials Part 8 at http://sps.cuny.edu/ofdit/blackboardessentials.html#part8)

Runs about 6 minutes, Video format: Tegrity

Rubrics—covers setting up and grading with rubrics, adding individual feedback to rubrics, https://media.sps.cuny.edu/filestore/1/5/0/5_4cc1836429498d8/1505_1cc19f80222e389.mp4

Runs about  4 minutes. Video format: Quicktime (Note: Contains a reference to other video tutorial “in this folder” which is actually the Tegrity video listed above this one)

There are also several short video recordings on the Bb 9.1 tab help website–look under User Guides>Assignments, Tests and Grades>Grade Center