Journal Club Article: Stanley, D., Coman, S., Murdoch, D., & Stanley, K. (2020). Writing exceptional (specific, student and criterion-focused) rubrics for nursing studies. Nurse Education in Practice, 102851.[Abstract]
What are Rubrics? ‘a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students’ constructed responses.
Effective Assessment: “Rubrics can effectively communicate unit learning outcomes to students and may contribute towards the academic rigour of nursing courses, when assessment criteria are articulated clearly and consistently to both students and educators/academics.”
Valid and reliable rubrics standardise the grading of assignments and assessments.
“Ensuring assessment tasks are clear, transparent and consistent helps both educators/academics and students to minimise stress, manage their workload and reach expectations in terms of addressing learning outcomes.”
They set the goals for the assignment, guide students and keep them on task, link the assignment and learning outcomes for the unit, module or subject and they provide a shorthand approach to providing effective and timely feedback
- Set the goals for the assignment (specific)
- guide students and keep them on task (student focused)
- link the assignment and learning outcomes for the unit, module or subject (criterion-focused
- provide a shorthand approach to providing effective and timely feedback
Components of a Rubric: Analytic and Specific. These include the criteria (based on the Intended Learning Outcomes) and standards (use of taxonomy such as Bloom’s or SOLO), the marking grid and the weighting for each criterion/standard. Be clear on what the ‘pass’ criteria is, ensure the criteria and pass standard are identical.
Standardising Assessment: Benchmarking is required when a group of assessors are conducting grading assessments or assignments.
Resources
Nursing Education Network. (2016). Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO’s).
Nursing Education Network. (2019). Intended Learning Outcomes .
Nursing Education Network. (2020). Learning Needs Assessment.