Making grading faster, fairer, and easier: using Rubrics

Trying to give fair grades for written assignments can be difficult, stressful, and time-consuming. Rubrics allow cross-instructor calibration and give you something to fall back on if your grade is questioned.  In addition, higher quality written assignments result from sharing rubrics with students, which, in turn, makes your grading job easier.  These materials will help you learn to construct and use rubrics for short-answer and essay questions.

These materials were generated from workshops held as part of a Professors for the Future project conducted by Erin K. Espeland in the spring of 2007.  The workshops were co-sponsored by the Teaching Resources Center.  A PowerPoint presentation file as well as accompanying audio are available on this web site.  In addition, you can download a short podcast summary of the main concepts of rubric construction and use. A detailed rubric for scoring botany papers (detailed rubric.doc) is also provided for you to download and modify for your discipline.

Open both .ppt and audio
PowerPoint
download PowerPoint audio (~15 min.)
download audio summary (~ 7 min.)
detailed rubric.doc