What’s With These Rubrics? 4: Rubrics

Implementing ILO-PLO-CLO Assessment in Your Courses

By Monica Sanford

Navigation:

  1. Why Does This Matter?
  2. Learning Outcomes
  3. UWest’s Institutional Learning Outcomes
  4. Rubrics ← YOU ARE HERE
  5. Creating Course Learning Outcome Rubrics
  6. Linking CLOs to Assignments
  7. Recording CLO Rubrics in Taskstream
  8. Conclusion

Rubrics

In order to measure how well UWest is enacting its mission and ILOs, the Mission and Identity Committee (MIC) created an ILO Rubric.  This rubric clarifies on a qualitative level what is an acceptable and unacceptable outcome.  For example, as part of the Self-Awareness ILO, students should be able to express themselves well when they graduate from UWest.  One of the sub-points of that ILO states that Expression pertains to the “Abilities for self-expression through work, art, and/or spiritual practice.”  But what does “express themselves well” mean?  How do we measure that?  And how do we determine the quality of a student’s expression in a quantifiable way?  This is what the ILO Rubric answers.

EXAMPLE:

Rubric Example

Rubric Example (partial)

 

This use of rubrics to measure learning outcomes is carried through at the institutional, program, and course-levels.  Rubrics at one level are designed to have conceptual links with rubrics at the other levels.  The ILO Rubric was developed by the Mission and Identity Committee (MIC).  PLO rubrics were developed by the department chairs in consultation with their faculty and their dean.  CLO rubrics were developed by the faculty in consultation with their department chairs.

Completed ILO & PLO Rubrics: (In progress; all will be made available when finalized.)

Religious Studies Program Learning Outcome Rubrics

Business Program Learning Outcome Rubrics

Psychology Program Learning Outcome Rubrics

  • BA in Psychology
  • MA in Psychology

English Program Learning Outcome Rubric

  • BA in English

General Education Program Learning Outcome Rubric

A CLO rubric clarifies for the professor and student how to differentiate between various qualities of work.  It also serves to ensure consistency between different professors.  If different professors teach the same course, for example, they have a shared idea of what constitutes higher level and lower level work from a student.  The student has an idea in advance of what is expected for a certain outcome.  Rubrics prevent assessment from being completely arbitrary or subjective.

(Of course, CLO assessment is not the same thing as grading and will not always directly correlate to the final grade.  After all, a student who does top-notch academic work may still demonstrate poor relationship skills when dealing with other students in the class or may show an unhealthy balance of mind, body, and spirit by neglecting their sleep or diet.  However given its mission and emphasis on a whole-person education, UWest feels that attributes such as relationship skills and life balance are important to impart to our students.  The CLOs, PLOs, and ILOs not only help convey this, but allow these “non-academic” issues to be assessed and measured independently from grades.)

Rubrics also ensure that throughout the ongoing process of assessing the university’s mission and learning outcomes a uniformity of data is maintained that allows comparisons can be made across time periods. This is what researchers would call reliability.  For example, rubrics ensure that data collected for a course that is taught repeatedly over multiple semesters are reliable, that is, consistent and comparable. Rubrics make consistent, comparable data available, recordable, and easily accessible for all types of assessment and evaluation.  They also provide means by which qualitative, verbal data can, with the use of percentages, be expressed in quantitative terms which are quickly communicated and understood, thus facilitating change and improvement that supports effective student learning.

The numbers used in the rubrics in turn tell us the quality of the work being produced by the students.  Rubrics give the numbers and percentages qualitative meaning.  They allow us to know whether or not we are meeting our goals and if something needs to be changed (and if so, we can then track what was changed and what impact that had). The information gathered over time will be used to assess course, program, and institutional effectiveness.  Strengths and weaknesses discovered will lead to changes, redesign, and improvements at all levels.  This can help professors refine their pedagogy, make course-level improvements, and contribute to program/department level and institution-level improvements.

Additionally, rubric-generated data can provide direct benefits to students. They will be able to access their personal data and see how well they are doing in terms of course, program, and institutional learning outcomes. They can discover and reflect on fulfilling the personal weaknesses and strengths that grade point average does not always reveal.

3. UWest’s Institutional Learning Outcomes ← Last Section ¦ Next Section → 5. Creating Course Learning Outcome Rubrics