## Must haves: Rubrics

Types of rubrics for open inquiry

Process rubrics

- (midterm/labmeeting/update) Presentation
- Labjournal
- Academic/Professional Attitude
- Teamwork, Feedback, How do you tackle the problems at hand

Output rubrics

- Final Preparation/Proposal
- Final (scientific ) presentation
- Reports

Necessary in the rubrics

- Use constructive alignment, rubrics should reflect the learning goals
- Research skills should be in the rubrics
- Formative feedback on rubric categories during open inquiry (via rubrics or orally, go/nogo point)

What we think is course specific or optional in a rubric

- Teamwork
- Safety
- Project management, data management
- Taking on feedback and giving and internalizing
- Research communication (Presentation, report, tutorial, video, manual)
- Output Rubrics

Tips on how to use rubrics / How to come from a rubric to a grade (pass/fail)

FAILING THE EXPERIMENT ≠ FAILING THE COURSE!

With open inquiry you’re grading the process rather than the outcome/knowledge obtained. Using a Rubrics give students guidelines of what is expected of them and what would qualify for a high(er) grade. It will standardize the grading between teachers and gives teachers guidelines on what to focus on during the course.

Rubrics as a feedback tool for the students tends to work best during the course, as students like to know what they can improve on to receive a high grade; at the end of a course students generally just like to know their grade.

We have experienced the following points when using Rubrics

- Rubrics with strict levels (e.g. 1, 4, 7, 10) may lead to tweaking rubrics to give students the grade the assessor would like to give, which surpasses the goal of the rubrics as a way to give feedback.
- Too few categories will results in large differences in grades
- Too many categories will average out in grade ~7 for all students

We found these can be circumvented by:

- Have one level for insufficient and 3-4 levels for sufficient criteria
- Have a different weighing for different categories/items
- Grade outstanding items above a 10 - for example 12 or 13
- Add extra criteria for outstanding students - for eample add 0.5 points to the total grade
- Let students add a learning goal in the rubrics
- Divide broad categories in subitems (e.g. experimental design in research question, approach, measurement plan, and analysis plan).
- Other than giving grades, you can use pass/fail per learning goal. The learning goals can be used as a basis to determine which items need to be passed by the students to pass the course.