Grading According to a Rubric

Abstract

One place the use of rubrics can be found is in the literature on taxonomies of learning. 3 The most famous is Bloom's taxonomy, cre­ ated half a century ago and recently revised. 4 One of the more promi­ nent themes in the revised work is the distinction between retention and transfer. The idea is that we would like our students not only to rerriember the content and skills taught in our courses, but also to be able to transfer this knowledge to novel situations. Thus, in having a student write an argumentative paper in a philosophy class, we are interested in assessing whether the student has retained the ideas, is­ sues, and arguments taught in the class, as well as whether the student can transfer this knowledge to the novel situation of creating his or her own argument. Bloom's taxonomy has two dimensions: one for types of knowledge, and one for types of cognitive processes. The different types of knowl­ edge represent divisions along a continuum that ranges from concrete to abstract. One of the types of cognitive processes (remembering) indicates the process used for retention of, while the other five (under­ standing, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating) are increasingly relevant to the transfer of, each of the types of knowledge. One of the uses of the taxonomy that the authors stress is maintain­ ing an alignment between educational objectives, instructional activi­ ties, and assessment. Each objective, activity, and assessment can be classified in the taxonomy, and, when this is done, it is immediately obvious whether these are in agreement. Grading (or scoring) rubrics can be employed in the service of this goal, by ensuring the codifying of the educational objectives into an assessment scheme, then guiding the choice of instructional activities.