Clancy,

I'm still attempting to avoid public institutional identification, out of respect for my students' privacy. I know you know where I teach, but I'd rather not broadcast it: any chance you could edit your post to remove that institutional information?

Thanks.

--

Mike
http://www.vitia.org/

Sorry about that. :O

CultureCat

As shameful as it to say, I try to discourage students from complaining or questioning my grades, and I get pretty defensive if they start up with the whole "I need to talk to you about that B you gave me on this paper. I think it deserves an A" b.s.

I tell students the truth; I am careful with my evaluations and explain my reasoning in the notes. I'm also far more of an expert at evaluating papers than they are, especially their own work; their own bias when looking at their own work is obvious to anyone.

Our former WPA argued that we shouldn't give the rubrics to students because it encourages them to complain and argue about their grades (the old, "Well, on this rubric it says blah blah...Why'd you give me a B?)

I don't know about you, but I find having to deal with student complaints about grades to be the worst part of teaching. The next worst is having to give them grades in the first place. In my experience, students will try to exploit every hole in the system to try to coerce me into dishonestly changing their grades. I try to make my system as foolproof as possible to discourage this approach.

You'd think that some students would honestly want help if they approached with the old, "Can you help me understand what I did wrong on this paper?" Unfortunately, this has always been a ruse for the old "I really need an A in this class" line.

I hate hate hate rubrics. Suppose 10 of my 100 points are "Grammar/style." If a paper is otherwise well done, but has, let's say, horrific grammar, so bad that it leaves me questioning the credibility of the author, then I'm left with two options:

Give a 0 for grammar and 90 for everything else--an "A" paper.

Make up something "wrong" with the paper in the other areas of the rubric, so that I can give a lower grade--the grade the paper actually merits.

I either lie to the student about her writing, or I lie to the institution about the grade the student "earned."

Perhaps this is why I no longer teach :)

--Dave

i agree. i don't care for rubrics, for the reasons you have mentioned, along with my belief that grading writing is ultimately subjective. i explain this to students when i explain why we are using portfolios (grades are issued twice a semester).

however, what i do provide is an overview of what a student needs to do to receive a c grade in my class--the basic requirements.

There is some evidence that suggests that when a teacher provides a rubric, the students will perform to the rubric and not exceed the listed expectations. How should we combat this phenomena? Corresponding self-evalutations by the student?

Has anyone required self-evals? And if so, what did you observe?

Dave,

Your complaint makes perfect sense if the goal of the first-year writing course is to produce the best possible papers for the course.

I don't believe it is: to me, grades on individual papers indicate directions for students to improve the way they write; i.e., the process. You give them a 0/10 for "grammar/style" (which, I gotta say, I regard as two completely different things), you're indicating that they have a good idea of how to put together a logical progression of ideas, display awareness of the rhetorical situation, etc., but need to develop their copyediting/proofreading skills or develop a more consistent or appropriate style. Seems like a fine teaching moment to me: the student understands how she can improve.

The problem with such thinking, of course, is that it makes it very easy to fall into the deficit model of teaching. But that's a whole 'nother topic.

--

Mike
http://www.vitia.org/

"I don't believe it is: to me, grades on individual papers indicate directions for students to improve the way they write; i.e., the process."

In my experience, most students see point system evaluation which accompany grades as things that they should have fixed with their paper. After all, most are only interested in the grade and justification for that grade, which is a focus on the paper, not the writer.

For example, at the end of the semester, many of us here at FSU offer grades on their final paper via email with the option of picking up the paper at a later date. About one or two of my students a year are interested in picking up the paper and receiving an evaluation. Very, very few that question the grade are interested in how to continue to improve as a writer. If interest in improving has not been communicated by the end of the semester, then why should we suspect that it is active on paper grading during the semester?

Besides, if our goal is to help students as writers through the process, then the real help comes through guidance during the process, not when students have disengaged with working on the text further.

Last, rubrics stress a quantitative method for evaluating papers. I believe that what Dave is suggesting is how arbitrary rubrics and point systems really are, how they ignore the writer who might have written the best paper in the class by all standards, except for the rubric and point system. How they are not really qualitative methods of analysis.

Meanwhile, I would suspect that the attraction to rubrics may be a result of

a) Cognitive dissonance--teachers are forced to use/create rubrics as part of departmental policy and so find ways to see them favorably.

b) Ease--rubrics are easier than careful evaluation of the writer and the writing. They make it easy to justify a grade, even if the justification isn't the best evaluation the teacher could have given.

Charlie, I couldn't agree more when you write, "if our goal is to help students as writers through the process, then the real help comes through guidance during the process, not when students have disengaged with working on the text further", and in fact that was the entire point of my original distinction, only you put it a whole lot better.

But you also write, "After all, most are only interested in the grade and justification for that grade, which is a focus on the paper, not the writer," which -- being hopeful -- I want to leave room for disagreement with. I think the drafting process works; I think that giving names to every step might be a pain in the butt, but it might also raise awareness that jotting down some quick ideas is a part of writing, that cutting and pasting them together is a part of writing, that revisiting something weeks or months later is a part of writing: that, in short, there's a sometimes scattered and sometimes broken and sometimes useful process that stretches across that barren space usually imagined as yawning between the perfect single paper and the perfectly inspired writer. That's what I think naming the parts does for students, and that's where I think rubrics can be useful, because they say, "you did this, and this, and this, and this -- and that was the point."

I don't believe in "the best paper in the class." And I didn't save any of my papers from first-year composition. But I can still field-strip an M16 in the dark, because I did it over and over again until it became part of my memory. And I think writing, with practice, can get easier, and better.

--

Mike
http://www.vitia.org/

I had the same problem. I finally revamped my scorecard so grammar was 20%, style was 20%...I found that if the grammar was rhetorically ineffective, I could justify lowering the style grade as well.

oh, i agree that the drafting process works. i just choose to use the assigned readings, class discussions, and responses they receive from me, as well as their classmates, on intermediate drafts as the "rubric" by which they should think about working on their writing, rather than providing up front a detailed "this is an A, this is a B, etc." i want them to consider all of those things, rather than looking to a rubric for the quick solution, as they are want to do. and in my response to their final drafts, i try to minimize the grade justification when possible and instead point out a few ways in which i think they can think about their writing in the future (i'm an endnote/letter-writing responder, sort of along the line of elbow in straub's twelve readers reading :)

meanwhile, let's save the "best paper in the class" discussion for a later time :)

Maybe what I do isn't really a rubric. I do NOT do "This is an A, This is a B"--that is way too confining and doesn't take into consideration student differences in writing proficiency and degrees of improvement, nor does it take second language issues into account. I grade my ESL students more on content than grammar, for example. Yesterday I was looking at an article by Peter Elbow in which he said it's better not to hold students to the same rigid standard; I agree completely.



What I do is more like a checklist/rubric. Even Elbow, in his article, says he tells his students that content will be worth roughly two-thirds of the grade, and grammar/style will be worth one-third. In my "rubric," I say things like "Before you turn your paper in, make sure the introduction contains your research question, your thesis statement, and definitions of terms your audience might not know." It's just guidelines. If a student turned in a paper with an introduction that contained all three of those things, but the thesis was "Music has a profound effect on our lives," I'd say that the scope was waaaaaaaay too broad (of course, I have conferences with them before they get to that point in which we discuss ways the student can make the scope appropriately narrow, so that doesn't happen).

The only point I'm making is that grading should be demystified in some fashion; that is, just saying "it's subjective" will alienate students with certain learning styles that prefer structure and explicit directions. It doesn't sound like you guys (Charlie and Mike) do that, though, since you give comments on drafts--I do that, too. Perhaps it should also be said that, from what I've seen you guys write about your teaching, your institutions' FYC setup is different from mine, which is more in the tech comm tradition. Our students don't do any personal essays, for example. Observe:

Genres

The following genres of discourse are required to be taught in Rhetoric 1101:

• Abstract. Abstracts are summaries of a
  source of researh (e.g., an articles or a book) that helps researchers to
  quickly determine the contents of the source thereby increasing the efficiency
  of research. There are two types of abstracts: descriptive and informative.
• Prospectus. A prospectus is a type of proposal
  for a forthcoming project. Proposals are essential to the functioning of
  any business; the skills learned writing a prospectus for Rhetoric 1101
  will help students write better proposals for other courses or in professional
  environments.
• Annotated bibliography. For purposes of
  this course, an annotated bibliography is a collection of abstracts focused
  on a single topic.
• Literature review. A literature review (also
  known as a review of research) is an objective synthesis of all the published
  information on a specific topic, as defined by the expectations of its potential
  audience. Literature reviews enable researchers to identify areas for further
  investigation and allow non-specialists to gain familiarity within a field
  or discipline, to enact policy decisions, to inform about controversies
  or new research, and so on.
• Argumentative or opinion paper. An argumentative or opinion
  paper is a relevant, subjective response to a current controversy that affects
  the values and livelihood of a specific audience. Argumentative or opinion
  papers allow students to voice their perspectives in response to certain
  positions articulated by others in class, in society, or in research.

I think these assignments lend themselves to rubrics or rubric-esque checklists in a way that personal essays do not. It's my job to teach these students the conventions of these genres, and I'm not sure how else to do it than to distribute these kinds of checklists.

CultureCat

i always worry when the rhetoric of assessment/evaluation moves in the direction reflected in the previous message(s) . . . as a reader, i make strange evaluations of texts without an articulated rubric . . . and that's fine because i have no effect over that piece of published writing, only over my own understanding of the text and the meanings it will carry in my mind (or won't, for that matter) . . .

but as a teacher, i have a tremendous effect on the writing my students do, and i find it utterly irresponsible not to disclose to students the prejudices i'm using to evaluate their work . . .

do i like it? no . . . i hate evaluating . . . i'd much rather just read their writing and work with their writing groups to help them get the piece where either 1) they want it to be as writers or 2) where they need it to be in order to get read by a wider or specified audience . . .

but to work, as i do, in a place that requires evaluation and NOT give students the inside knowledge on how i will enact my prejudices (or the program's prejudices) about what constitutes "effective" communication at various levels seems to me extremely unethical behavior . . .

more concerned, am i, with teacher who teach writing -- who teach rhetoric -- and fear NEGOTIATION . . . i tell my students that those grades are utterly negotiable, that their portfolio cover letters are places to advocate for the grade they deserve based on what proofs they can muster, and i tell them that if we disagree over their grade (which is rare since most students really know how well they're doing and how hard they're working), then they can come talk to me and show me what i'm missing in their work, WHY their work is better (or worse, i suppose) than i have assessed it as, etc . . .

i guess i don't fear my students and i don't fear disclosing to them the backstage machinations that determine their grade . . . all this talk in this thread about not wanting to disclose to students what we do seems as though we have something to hide, as though our evaluations are 'subjective' and they just aren't . . . we have positions and assumptions we're working with -- some of us may not know them (which makes our students right -- we are just toying with them capriciously) and some of us may and are afraid to share "power" with students . . . both scenarious strike me as tragic . . .

will
http://www.rhetboi.net

I made the mistake once of telling a class that their grades on their papers were "negotiable." End result? A train of students at my office begging/pestering/and accusing me of foul play all semester long. I even overheard a student explaining that she just slapped a draft together because she could always "negotiate" later. I had this same problem with offering students an attempt to revise their final drafts...Big mistakes, in my opinion.

I still allow students to "negotiate," but I do so in a different way. I tell them to submit, with their final drafts, a "Letter of Transmittal" in which they describe the work they did on the project, discuss any problems they encountered, etc. It seems that as long as I give students some opportunity to "vent," as it were, they seem to be satisfied with the grade they receive.