Whether using College of Lake County rubrics (see October Assessment Tip) or those you create yourself, rubrics support student learning in two important ways:

1) They determine the stages of learning a particular skill or creating a particular assignment, and they describe what those stages look like.
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2) They objectively assess student learning and communicate direct, clear, and concise feedback to students.
Highlights of what rubrics can do for your students and your teaching:

• Rubrics make assessing student work efficient, consistent, and objective.

 

• Rubrics provide specific feedback that a single grade cannot supply. They show students their strengths and where there is still need for improvement.

 

• Rubrics give students concrete direction on what the assignment asks of them. For example, a rubric states clearly what good persuasive paper looks like.

 

• Rubrics encourage independent thinking and self-reflection because students are asked to analyze their own work and compare it to the standard set by the rubric.

 

• Rubrics help students better understand the grade they’ve received. And this often means fewer grade debates between students and professors.

 
If you have any questions about how to create or use rubrics for specific assignments in your courses or for use in Academic Department Review, please don’t hesitate to contact Vasilka Maslanka, assessment coordinator at x2364 or vmaslanka@clcillinois.edu.

​Whether participating in a CLO assessment or not, we encourage you to use the CLO rubrics in your teaching. Rubrics help students know what’s expected of them and help you, the instructor, assess learning more easily and efficiently. If you don’t currently use rubrics in your teaching, try using one of ours.  If you think only parts of the rubric work for your assignment then use those parts. The rubrics are there for you to use in whatever way works best for your assignment and your individual teaching style.
 
You can find the CLO rubrics on the assessment page of the College’s website: 
Assessment College of Lake County
 
If you find the rubrics useful, consider participating in one of our CLO assessments. You’ll be supplying the assessment committee with the valuable data we need to develop evidence-based strategies that will help our students. You’ll also receive individual data for your course from IEPR and help with analyzing the results if needed.
 
Here’s our current assessment cycle:
 
Fall 2017—Writing, Diversity and Social Justice (There’s still time to sign-up)
Spring 2018—Reading, Quantitative Literacy
Fall 2018—Critical Thinking, Oral Communication
Spring 2019—Information Literacy, Technological Competency

The topic of Diversity and Social Justice is one of the featured College Learning Outcomes (CLO) for the fall 2017 semester.  The Assessment of Student Learning Committee examines a few different CLO's each semester by having facutly focus on an assignment they use in class and measure it against a special rubric.

For assessing Diversity and Social Justice, CLC looks for students to engage with and learn from ideas, beliefs and behaviors different from one's own, and to identify concrete ways to contribute to a fair and just world.  At the advanced level, a student would demonstrate insight, learning and growth by engaging with multiple perspectives, and they would express the value and importance of contributing to the advancement of social justice.  

For more information on the CLO's visit http://​www.clcillinois.edu/aboutclc/who-we-are/assessment

The end of the semester is a good time for reflection on what worked well (and not so well) in your courses.  Reflecting on end of the semester exams is a good place to start, as final exams supply concrete data that can be used to gain insight into what our students understand.
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Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Review how students did on each test question so you can gauge whether the question accomplished the goal you had in mind when you wrote it.

 

• Use test questions to analyze which learning outcomes students didn’t perform well on and consider how to address those outcomes better with class activities and additional practice time.

 

• Take note of any questions that were either frequently missed or answered incorrectly so you can revise them or eliminate them.

 

• Finally, based on your analysis of your end of the semester test, come up with which lessons and assignments helped your students most and use that information to focus your instruction.

The assessment of student learning committee is assessing information literacy and technological competency this semester. Below, you can find ways to assess these CLOs in your classes.
 
Require students to do the following for any assignment or class project:
 
Technological Competency

• Use word processing software
• Use spreadsheets and/or databases
• Use the Internet and Web basics
• Create graphics and multimedia
• Use presentation software such as Power Point and Prezi
• Participate in any electronic communication

This is not a comprehensive list. Feel free to use any technology specific to your discipline.
 
Information Literacy

• Use and acknowledge sources beyond their own knowledge and experience in their classwork
• Find and use relevant and credible information from a variety of sources to support their ideas or creative work
• Recognize different types of sources (e.g., popular and scholarly, primary and secondary) and use the best ones for their purpose
• Distinguish biased and false from objective and credible information
• Acknowledge or cite sources correctly that are used in a presentation, paper, project, or any other course work

(from 2-6-17 Faculty Focus)

Midterm evaluations bring a host of institutional measures to reach out to underachieving students. However, what might make the most difference to students’ success in their courses is to enable them to assess their own performance and set goals as well as to ask questions of and provide feedback to the instructor. Instructors can give students this reflective opportunity through an online journal assignment in which students do the following:

• Report their overall grade in the course
• Report their attendance record (when attendance is required)
• Reflect on their performance, whether it meets their expectations
• Provide goals for the rest of the course (often in the form of a GPA, but can also be learning outcomes)
• Provide feedback and ask questions

It is best to implement this progress report assignment about a third of the way through a course so that underperforming students can change trajectory before the midterm.

My experience with the assignment
Since I make all grades available on our university’s learning management system, students can always see their grades, but they often don’t check or acknowledge that these grades are available. Further, because not all professors provide grades automatically, students may not fully understand their progress even when grades are available.
Students take anywhere from 50 to 400 words to complete this journal assignment, based on their needs. Their posts 
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• What percentage of CLC students skim or don't complete reading assignments and why?
• What are our students' rationale for not reading, even when their professors say it's important to read?
• What are some things faculty can do to help (beyond just allowing time for questions and stating what's important in the reading)?

Don't know? Got four and a half minutes?  Then you must check out this fun Vimeo overview that succinctly covers the results of last year's AQIP survey and shares evidence-based strategies for improving reading that you can use in your class right now!

Kelly Black, Reading Faculty, shares the three main elements necessary in a good reading assignment.  

Clear Communication:

• Schedule it in the Syllabus when possible.
• Communicate the assignment orally in class and post in Blackboard.

Preview, Set Purpose and Communicate Importance: Why do you want them to read it? What will they be doing with it?  How do they know? How do you communicate this to them?

• Quick preview about what they should pay attention to while reading (can be done orally at the end of class or with a study guide).
• Introduce key concepts they will be reading about (orally or with a study guide).
• Consider making the study guides worth points.  Student tend to not do “optional” or “recommended”.  They do “required” and “points”.

Make it Matter:  follow up the readings with in-class activities for at least half the assignments.  Here are some ideas for doing so:

• Discussions:
  • Provide class time for students to ask questions about the reading.
  • Fishbowl discussions
  • Socratic Seminar
  • Muddiest point
  • Write-pair-share (sometimes called think-pair-share)
  • Problem-based questions that require them to reference the readings.
  • Jig saw
  • Small group discussions
• Quizzes and tests over the reading (can be open book/open note)
• Reference the readings in class
• Make connections between material learned in class and the assigned reading.
• Study/Discussion guides.  These can be complex, or very simple – using the same questions every time
  • Sample questions: What is the focus of this reading?  What is the author’s most important point?  What is one question about the reading you would like me to answer in class?
    • In one study, a professor increased his reading compliance rate to 80% just by incorporating simple reading guide questions similar to the ones listed above.  He graded them using the simple rubric at the bottom of this page.

• You could also focus all study/reading guides around essential questions in your discipline. 
  • Example: Psychology has four goals: Describe, explain, predict and control.  A simple reading guide question could just be “How does this reading help us describe, explain, predict or control human behavior?”

​SAMPLE SIMPLE RUBRIC FOR READING RESPONSE:
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​This is the million dollar question.  Research on the national level indicates that on any given day, only about 30% of college students complete the readings, leading to the common lament from professors feel they can’t break away from power points and lectures because they don’t trust that students have read the material.  The brighter side of the research, however, indicates that the number one strongest influence for getting students to complete their reading is – YOU!
                So…what should we be doing?  Last fall, CLC engaged in a reading climate survey and directly asked students that very question.  I will be sharing instructional strategies throughout the school year, based on student response.  Here are the top three responses to the question “What strategies can professors use to support your learning of the assigned readings?”
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1.Tell us what is important in the text before we read.

• A simple oral preview of what you consider important in the assigned reading during the last five minutes of class can accomplish this.
• Study guides can also be a good tool – and don’t have to be overly complicated.  They can be as simple as a list of subjects that will be important to a test, lecture or project.

2.Open book/Open Notes tests/quizzes.  This really incentivizes students to read.  They know they will be applying it to something.  If you are worried that they won’t read because they can use the book, don’t be.  Students quickly learn they don’t have enough time to read the chapter AND complete the quiz.  Giving only open notes quizzes is also an option, and ensures they have to read to take good notes.
3.Discuss how the reading connects to what we are doing in class.  In other words, make references to the reading – explain how it connects to the lecture, lab or problem based activity.
A little more good news.  Our research indicates that you don’t have to do a follow up activity every class.  Having a follow-up reading activity for about half reading assignments seems to be enough to boost reading completion.

(Source:  Kelly Black, Reading faculty)