Presenters: David Fleming— University of Massachusetts Amherst
Bob Broad— Illinois State University
Description: Rubrics remain a ubiquitous tool of writing assessment. And it’s easy to see why: a one-page scale with levels (A-F, 6-0, etc.), along with a description of performance corresponding to each level, can promote uniformity and transparency in writing assessment. But rubrics also have drawbacks. They tend to be developed top-down on the basis of abstract goals rather than close attention to actual texts; they imply a simplicity in evaluation that can be misleading; and they sometimes bear little relationship to what teachers actually do in the classroom and how they actually read. Bob Broad’s What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing has sparked interest among postsecondary writing teachers in an alternative method of assessment called “dynamic criteria mapping” (DCM), which begins with real student papers and asks groups of teachers to discuss, as candidly as they can, how they actually read those papers and what they really value in them. This panel will describe DCM, present a case study of how one writing program tried to move “beyond rubrics” in its assessment practices, and discuss the constant pressure – from
|
