Of Course!
Current Issue: May 2008
Rubrics and Feedback
Of Course!
is an occasional online
publication from the Research Academy for University Learning at
Montclair State
University. It provides readers with short but powerful ideas and
information about how best to create exceptional learning
environments. In part, it reports on important research on human
learning and motivation that have implications for our teaching.
Occasionally, it draws from the practices and insights of highly
successful university teachers, many of them subjects of a fifteen year
study of professors who have had phenomenal successs in helping and
encouraging their students to achieve remarkable learning results.
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When
David Kanter went off to college at the University of Pennsylvania, he
expected his professors would give him "extensive feedback" on each
assignment. Many students, he surmised, are "interested in intellectual
growth," and "only constructive feedback can foster such growth."
Kanter, a freshman from East Falmouth, Massachusetts, reported that
instead he got a "few perfunctory, illegible comments. . . scribbled in
the margins." Writing in the student newspaper , The Daily
Pennsylvanian, he concluded "that unmarked papers and vague comments
were the norm" for students at this Ivy League school.
In a recent informal survey of Montclair students, we found similar
sentiments: a strong desire for feedback on their work. But they didn't
just want feedback along with their grade. They wanted something their
professors regularly enjoy on their own scholarship, a chance to
receive feedback and to resubmit their work before any final judgment
is made about its worth. When Richard Light surveyed students at
Harvard nearly two decades ago, he also found the same views. Light was
trying to identify the qualities of those courses at Harvard that
students found most intellectually satisfying. After interviewing
thousands of current and former students in the late 1980's, he
concluded that such courses had two major qualities: high but
meaningful standards, and "lots of opportunity to try, fail, receive
feedback, and try again" before any grade was put on the work.
Instinctively, professors have always known that students would learn
best and most deeply if they had that kind of opportunity for revision,
but practical considerations have frequently prevented it from
happening. David Kanter concluded that the lack of feedback he was
getting might be "inevitable given that a single course can have over
100 students who are each turning in a 10- to 15-page paper." While
classes at Montclair are generally smaller than the one's Kanter
encountered, most professors here teach more classes than do the
faculty members at Penn. "How can I even think about assigning major
papers in a class," one Montclair faculty member asked in frustration,
"let alone give students feedback on their work before it counts for a
grade."
To do so, a growing number of Montclair faculty members are using
rubrics to provide feedback to their students. If the number of new
books on rubrics is any indication, so are other professors across the
country. One of the most popular such books is Introduction to Rubrics:
An Assessment Tool to Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedback and
Promote Student Learning , by Dannell Stevens and Antonia Levi. The
Research Academy has a copy of that book in its library.
At Penn, Kramer also found a few instructors who use a "nifty
technological tool" called Waypoint Outcomes to employ rubrics. Let's
say you want to make the same comment to twelve students. With
Waypoint, you simply type it in once, and then each time after that
requires only a checked box. Furthermore, the comment can be kept and
offered to other students the next semester. The brainchild of Andrew
McCann, an engineer and writing instructor at Drexel, Waypoint allows
professors to offer better comments in far less time.
While Waypoint helps speed up the process, it alone can't guarantee
good comments. There is also a growing body of research literature on
what kinds of comments will work best in helping and stimulating
students to make those revisions. When Joshua Aronson spoke on our
campus in March as part of the Provost's Series on University Teaching
and Learning, he noted some of that research. As Aronson mentioned,
some of it challenges some widely held notions about how to provide
good feedback to students. It also points to a somewhat maddening
conclusion: social forces can help shape what kinds of feedback will
work best, but since different groups of students face different social
winds, the same kind of feedback might have completely opposite
influences on any two students. In one case, it might encourage
students to do revisions; in another, the same comments could
demoralize a student, producing apathy and defeat.
Maddening, yes, but with dedication and study we can learn more about
our students and about what kinds of feedback and comments will work
best. As Kanter wrote in his op-ed piece, "students don't get
insightful feedback simply because [the professor] uses a fancy
computer program. They get it instead because of the dedication of
their professor."
If you want more information on rubrics and the scholarship on
providing feedback, contact the Research Academy. Among other items, we
have a video recording of Aronson's talk. The Research Academy is
currently exploring the possibility of bringing Waypoint Outcomes to
Montclair State. If you have any interest in or experience with this
tool, please contact us. Furthermore, please contact us if you have
done research on feedback to students.
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