Customer Reviews

Scoring Rubrics in the Classroom: Using Performance Criteria for Assessing and Improving Student Performance (Experts In Assessment Series)

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Although one can never be truly objective, this book is a good step in the right direction. It explains what rubrics are, the theory behind them, and testimonials as to how they can be used. Many science professors use rubrics, but few arts faculty are aware that such cut and dried schemes can be useful to them.

Interestingly, if you are instructing adults (e.g. post-secondary), rubrics not only assist the instructor in grading, but also the student in understanding what your expectations are.

If you suffer from grade challenges or suggestions that your syllabi are too vague, this book may be helpful to you. It will help you understand why you should use rubrics, but, more importantly, it will help you work through the phases of creating them for your classes.

I appreciated the specificity of this book. I found much to think about regarding the principles and applications discussed.

I like to think of myself as an expert in assessment, but I believe that my ability to effectively use rubrics to guide student learning and to assess student learning and my teaching have improved because I read this book.

The authors clearly explain how a rubric differs from a checklist of items for completion by describing how we can use rubrics to evaluate quality, student understanding and other important criteria. My first experience in developing a rubric failed to address the quality issue. My students fully satisfied the criteria in my original rubric but with very different levels of quality. I realized then that I had a lot to learn about writing rubrics. This book can help.

However, I am not impressed with most of the rubrics illustrated in the book because I want to see each score point in a rubric address the same traits with descriptors that show a clear drop from each higher score point to each lower score point. I love Jay McTighe's book on Understanding by Design and got interested in generalized rubrics by reading that book. Generalized rubrics are powerful because they can be used to evaluate numerous different assignments. For instance, I usually want to evaulate my student's level of understanding and their level of product quality. I can reuse rubrics that address such generalized criteria for many of the assignments I create.

I'd buy the book for the general info but look elsewhere for great examples of rubrics. For instance, the Ontario Ministry of Education in Canada has wonderful examples of task rubrics and exemplar papers in many subjects that are useful models.

The book was not what I expected. I thought I would be receiving a book chock full of child friendly rubrics. Instead it was more for high school teachers or college professors. Pretty much a waste of money.