Thursday, April 22, 2010

The grading rubric: a double-edged sword (part 2)

In my last post, I talked about how the grading rubric came to be pervasive in higher education. This time, I'll explain my "double-edged sword" label.

First, grading rubrics do have several advantages. They give students--especially freshmen, who have enough anxiety just adjusting to college--a feeling of security. They give an illusion of objectivity, which students equate with fairness. Consequently, grading rubrics can serve to shield faculty against charges of grading bias, and, in fact, my colleagues and I have noticed that fewer students challenge the grades that they receive when rubrics are used. It's harder for a student to say, "I think my paper deserved a B instead of a C+" when s/he can see exactly where the paper in question falls on the "grammar and style" scale, for example.

But grading rubrics also have a couple of serious flaws, at least in my estimation. First, rubrics have reduced the "art" of evaluation to number-crunching, usually with less-than-satisfactory results. Teachers know what I mean here; we grade by "instinct" as much as by formulae. Most teachers instinctively know what an "A" paper looks like, and what distinguishes it from a "B" paper, or a "C" paper, and so on. Most of us can probably also describe the qualities of "A," "B," and "C" papers in a few sentences at need (the approach that I mentioned in my last post). But coming up with a full rubric that always assigns the grade that I would instinctively give has been frustrating. I have found that assignments graded by rubrics tend to earn higher marks than I instinctively want to give them, frequently by half a letter grade. For example, several papers that I instinctively categorized as "C" papers actually turned out to be low "B"s when the numbers were tallied. I'm not sure why this is; either I'm still trying to figure out just how much weight I really want to place on grammar vs. organization vs. ideas, or I tend to grade papers as whole units, rather than as composites of four different categories that all get individual grades that are then averaged together. Second, in my experience with undergrads so far, rubrics encourage students to give less than their best effort on every assignment. Rather than reading through an instructor's general description of an "A" paper and doing his/her best work in hopes of receiving a good grade, students look at rubrics and decide that they can sacrifice a few "format" points in order to use a larger font or wider margins (i.e., write a shorter paper), or that they can sacrifice a few "grammar and style" points by not proofreading their work (i.e., procrastinating).

I really suspect that student performance would improve if I was allowed to grade without rubrics. Sure, there would be an initial, anxious period in which the students adjusted to the uncertainty, but isn't life itself uncertain? How is "teaching to the rubric" (or to the standardized tests that started this mess in the first place) helping young people adjust to the adult world? Don't we want to produce workers who are confident in exercising their own initiative, rather than being micromanaged? I think so.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

The grading rubric: a double-edged sword (part 1)

I'm about one-third of my way through the second set of papers this semester. We (the teaching fellows) have been strongly encouraged to provide our students with "grading rubrics" for each written or oral assignment that we expect them to complete. If you've been out of the education "loop" for a while, the term "grading rubric" is probably new to you. Basically, it's a table that has a row for each criterion that the teacher plans on factoring into the grade, and columns that describe what the student needs to do to achieve a certain number of points for each criterion. For example, to earn the maximum number of "grammar and style" points, a paper needs to be "almost entirely free" of spelling or grammatical errors. Several errors that do not detract from the reader's ability to understand the paper earn fewer points, and errors that distract the reader and hinder his or her ability to follow the flow of the paper earn fewer still.

Gone (long gone) are the days when students simply handed in their best work and hoped that the teacher would evaluate their papers objectively (my undergrad experience). Gone, too (but more recently departed) are the days when instructors simply included a few sentences in their syllabi that explained what their vision of an "A" paper or a "B" paper (and so on) was, and what they considered absolutely unacceptable (my early grad school years). Now, it's tables and formulas and calculator-punching.

Why the change? Because today's college students want--nay, demand--rubrics. Today's college students (especially the freshmen) have spent the last 12 years being "taught to the test." The increased attention given to scoring highly on the endless barrage of standardized tests that children and teenagers are subjected to has driven many elementary and secondary educators to exchange the art of training minds for the business of programming young brains to churn out the answers that the test designers want to see. Our schools no longer produce creative critical thinkers and independent learners but automatons with well-trained memories. And the result is that students who have "graduated" from this system simply cannot function in a subjective learning environment. They panic--visibly--when given free reign to choose a paper topic. They want to know exactly what they need to know for an exam (I hear you saying, "But our generation did that, too," and I grant your point, but today's students have taken it to a ridiculous level.). And they expect that their more "subjective" assignments like oral presentations and paper will be graded as if they were standardized tests.

Now, rubrics aren't without their advantages, and I'll have more to say about that in my next post, but I have yet to find or create one that ended up assinging the grades that I intuitively want to assign. I'm frustrated. I feel that the required use of grading rubrics is robbing my students of some valuable lessons. But since I'm out of time for tonight, I'll have to pick this thread up again next time. Stay tuned!

Monday, April 12, 2010

In praise of mushrooms

Tonight's side dish was sauteed cremini ("baby bella") mushrooms with shallots and thyme. Many people think of mushrooms only as condiments--toppings to add to pizzas, burgers, or salads--but the humble fungus is much more versatile than that. Mushrooms can become a tasty and substantial side dish alongside meat, fish, or legume entrees (I have an Indian recipe for mushrooms in tomato sauce that makes a nice accompaniment for curried lentils or chickpeas)if handled with skill.
For starters, never soak mushrooms in water to clean them, as they already have a high moisture content and readily absorb any moisture that they come into contact with. Instead, simply brush off any dirt or growing medium on your mushrooms with a paper towel or vegetable brush. Second, be sure to cook the mushrooms at a temperature that is high enough to extract and evaporate their moisture before attempting to brown them or adding them to any dish in which excess moisture would be detrimental, such as a quiche, strata, or lasagna. Five minutes of cooking over medium-high heat in a bit of oil should cause the mushrooms to release their liquid; a further 8 minutes or so should be all that is needed to evaporate the moisture in the pan.

Mushrooms can also stand alone in vegetarian entrees, and for good reason: portabella mushrooms have 2 grams of protein per cup (not great, but better than other vegetables) and are a "very good" source of folic acid, potassium, magnesium, and other B vitamins. So if you are watching your blood pressure, mushrooms can be an ally in your quest for better health (just be mindful of the amount of salt you add).

The next time you are at a loss for a savory side dish, consider the mushroom. To recreate the dish we had for dinner tonight, follow the instructions above. Once the moisture in the pan has evaporated, reduce the heat to medium and add a little butter or oil. Cook another 8 minutes or so (you don't need to stir the whole time) until the mushrooms are a lovely mahogony color, then add a little finely minced red onion or shallot and about a tablespoon of fresh thyme and cook until the onion is soft. Deglaze the pan with a splash of sherry (the traditional accompaniment to mushroom soup)and allow the liquid to evaporate before serving.