Collaborative Design: Building Task-Specific Rubrics in the Honors Classroom

I read Joan Digby's essay with interest and found in it concerns I have heard expressed elsewhere. I agree with her that the role of college faculty is to help students "engage deeply in 'critical thinking.'" As someone who has spent twenty years teaching literature and writing, I nodded in agreement when she stated, "My field is literature-that is, thought and sensibility expressed in words. My field encourages the subjective, anecdotal, oddly shaped experiences that constitute creative writing" Where I veered away from agreement was her assumption that using rubrics is antithetical to encouraging critical thinking or to the creative expression of these subjective, anecdotal, oddly shaped experiences I also disagree that using rubrics is merely a means to "measure students against preconceived expectations " In fact, I would argue that creating task-specific rubrics with students does exactly the opposite. Not just the choice to use rubrics but the approach to creating them and the format they take express one's philosophy of teaching and learning. As someone who values collaboration with my students, supports students' ownership of their own learning, and looks for opportunities to increase their critical thinking skills, I find many benefits to using task-specific rubrics that evolve from class discussion. This process is ideal for honors students because of their high level of engagement, motivation, and intellectual capability, and it is especially useful in the two-year college where students are often grappling with what it means to be a college student as well as what it means to be in honors In considering ways that rubrics can help support the goals listed above, I have appreciated John Bean's approach to rubrics in Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom because, as the title suggests, it contextualizes rubrics within critical thinking and active learning. Bean delineates a range of approaches to rubrics, each of which can be presented to students: generic or task-specific, analytic or holistic, points or grades or both, grid or no grid (269-276). Discussing these options with the class allows students to consider the pros and cons as well as what each approach suggests about learning Task-specific rubrics are particularly beneficial because they increase discussion about the different components of a specific assignment. Students create the rubric's criteria based on the assignment's components, describing how they understand the components and the relationship between these components and the students' own learning. The discussions lead to an increased understanding of the assignment's purpose and more critical thinking, and they afford students and instructors the opportunity to address confusion or misunderstandings Additionally, the students blend their own words with academic language to describe the different criteria, thereby becoming more knowledgeable and confident about academic work while also taking ownership of their learning. Next, the class considers the descriptors, which will demonstrate that the criteria just decided on have been met and the degree to which they have been met. This discussion involves a thoughtful consideration not just of what the criteria mean but how one recognizes them when they are achieved in practice Students also determine how much detail needs to be provided in the rubric to clarify why the student met a specific level of achievement and what areas might still need more attention. …