Continuous rubric

Intent

Improve upon existing matrix-style rubrics with a type of rubric that indicates “zones” of standards and focuses on capturing the differences between standards, to make assessments clearer to students and easier for instructors to make assessment judgments.

Problem

Rubrics are commonly used to assess student work. They typically appear as matrices of standards descriptions, e.g. what “proficient” vs. “not yet” work looks like for a learning objective. It is often difficult to succinctly and precisely describe a grading standard unambiguously. Even the best-described standards leave room for judgment calls: for instance, how do you evaluate a student who’s achieved most, but not all, of the descriptors for a particular standard? When an assignment assesses multiple concepts, some concepts may require fewer “levels” or descriptors than others, leading to pressure on instructors to fill the boxes with less meaningful or less applicable descriptors. These factors reduce the utility of rubrics as the time-saving, streamlining grading tools they were designed to be.

Solution

The continua model of a guide to making judgments, or GTMJ for short, improves upon traditional rubrics in several key ways:

1. Standards continuum. Achievement is conveyed as a continuous arrow, from the description of the lowest achievement level up to (and beyond) the highest-defined achievement level, for a learning outcome or concept, rather than in discrete boxes.
2. Variable standards descriptors. The rubric contains only the number of descriptors necessary to indicate the progression from the lowest standard to the highest standard.
3. Nested standards descriptors. Each descriptor higher on the continuum implicitly contains all of the previous descriptors. This way, instructors need only specify the key differences between standards descriptors.
4. Standards zones. Standards are depicted as ranges along the continua for each learning outcome / concept being assessed, rather than a discrete set of descriptors pertaining to a particular standard. This means that students do not have to meet all of the descriptors for a standard to meet that standard.

Figure 2 in the source paper illustrates how the continuous rubric works in practice using an education course as an example.

Applicability

The GTMJ would be best suited in a specifications grading context, where assignments typically touch on multiple learning outcomes or concepts, or a standards-based grading context. It provides a more visual description of student achievement on each objective: students can clearly see how far up the continuum their work lands, and how much further they need to go to achieve a particular standard. It may also work well in medium-sized classes, because it can streamline some of the judgment calls that instructors typically make with matrix-style rubrics.

How to Implement

Rather than trying to capture all of the elements of a particular standards level, implementors should articulate the key distinguishing differences in behaviors as a student’s work approaches the higher points of the continuum. These differences then become the descriptor points on the GTMJ, and often point to where the standard zone boundaries should lie.

See Also

N/A

Source

Source: Peter Grainger & Katie Weir (2016) An alternative grading tool for enhancing assessment practice and quality assurance in higher education, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 53:1, 73-83, DOI: 10.1080/14703297.2015.1022200

Described by: Amy Csizmar Dalal, adalal@carleton.edu

References

References to publications or web pages describing, evaluating, or sharing experiences with this technique.

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