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An Introduction to the Power of Rubrics |
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As UMUC faculty move to detailed definition and assessment of student learning outcomes, the use of grading rubrics and other holistic assessment tools is taking on increasing prominence. An enthusiastic advocate is UMUC Graduate School's Stella Porto (see bio below). Prof. Porto has been researching, using, and spreading the word about the value of rubrics since the summer of 2002. That year, she was invited to give a 1-day course on assessment in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at an international conference held by the Brazilian Distance Education Association. Preparing for that event, she found that much of the work by T.A. Angelo and K.P. Cross inspired her, and she adapted many of their assessment practices to the online environment. Her active use of rubrics was a by-product of her research and has become a progressively indispensable element of her teaching. During these 2 years of implementing and improving her rubrics, Prof. Porto has been gratified by overwhelmingly positive student response to her assessment specifications and her comprehensive feedback on assignments, as well as by a reduction in student questions about assignment expectations and grading. The UMUC community has benefitted from Dr. Porto's insights on the subject of rubrics in two public forums in 2004. She has graciously allowed the DE Oracle to present here her materials, which help to introduce and define grading rubrics and their value to UMUC online instructors:
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February 2004 Seminar, "The Power of Rubrics" |
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July 2004 CTL Online Workshop |
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Dr. Porto's workshop webpages introduce a number of topics and resources related to creating and using rubrics, including the following: |
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Dr. Porto's Paper & Participation Rubrics |
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An instructor is likely to continually refine his/her rubrics in response to student feedback and/or the instructor's own experience using them. Also, the instructor may wish to provide, along with a rubric, additional instructions about performance expectations, customized to students in a given class in a given semester. Here are examples of Dr. Porto's paper and participation rubrics, including examples of a revised rubric and of additional instructions. |
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URLs of Links Used on This Page
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Stella Porto is an instructor in the Master of Information Technology program and Program Director in the Master of Distance Education program; she has worked at at UMUC since January 2001. She is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she lived until September 2000. Starting her eduction in the field of electrical engineering, Stella obtained her Master's and PhD degrees in Computer Science (CS at PUC-Rio)from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) in 1991 and 1995, respectively. Her research work focused in the fields of parallel processing and heuristic methods for combinatorial optimization problems. In teaching, her experience ranges from algorithm design, parallel programming, computer architectures, parallel and distributed computing and parallel algorithms in the Computer Sciences field to learning objects, multimedia and course development models in the Distance Education field. Stella lives in the Kentlands (Gaithersburg, MD), with her husband Wayne and their two sons, Bernardo (6) and Gustavo (4). |
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Our thanks to Stella Porto for contributing this information to the Graduate School's DE Oracle @ UMUC. If you have questions/comments regarding this article, or you have classroom management advice and experiences you would like to share, or would like to recommend someone to contribute an article, please send an email to: degrad@umuc.edu or contact your DE Coordinator. Thanks very much! |
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