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In Which My Students Create Their Own Rubric

Can I just brag about my students for a second?

I’ve assigned them a blogging project this semester for their long(er) writing assessment. Over the course of the semester, they’ll be asked to work in small groups to compose and submit three blog posts related to the class material. The posts can be about anything relevant to World Civ I – they can create comic strips, write satires, summarize research, give a reflection on what a part of the course means to them, or review films/tv series. In addition, I’ve made commenting on their peers’ posts a part of their overall grade for the project.

The problem with accepting such diverse material is that it’s beastly to grade. I felt completely stymied trying to come up with evaluation criteria when I wrote the assignment over the winter break.

So, during our first meeting on Wednesday, I gave them a rather unconventional assignment: as a class, compose your own rubric for the blog posts and comments plus decide how many points (or what letter grade) each post/comment will be worth. Mind you, this was the introductory class for a compulsory history module that most students are more than a little wary of – and usually professors set the evaluation standards, right? I really wasn’t sure what to expect from the exercise.

It was ridiculously easy and the responses were marvelous. The students, working in small groups, submitted their responses via Socrative. For the blog posts, criteria like “insightful,” “relevant,” “free of grammatical errors,” and “not too draggy” (meaning, as a student explained, engaging, entertaining, not dull) popped up on the screen immediately. Expectations for the comments included “respectful, not aggressive,” “focused,” and “constructive feedback.”

I highlighted the recurring words and ideas on the whiteboard, funneling them into a list of standards for an “A” blog post or comment. Within fifteen minutes, we had a working system of evaluation for the blogging project. The final results looks like this:

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In the future, I think there are ways to make this exercise even more student centered – maybe by having a couple of students lead the portion where we funnel common ideas into a final list or adding a Socrative exercise for voting on and finalizing criteria. But I’m pleased with the first round and excited to see how discussions, posts, and other class activities proceed with such an obviously thoughtful group of people.

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