Dear fellow seminaristianites,

I ask students to give peer feedback on short arguments submitted by their fellow students, in which they score them from 1 to 5 on four different aspects, and then explain their score and make suggestions. The rubric I developed for this describes what should be expected for each score. Typically what happens is that students mostly give each other fours and fives, with threes being reserved for the barely coherent.

In the fall, I plan to ask students to collaborate to develop their own rubric. I will ask them what sorts of things they think would be important to evaluate for a good bit of argumentative writing, and what would qualify something as below, above, or at average for each of those criteria. I would probably do this as a think/pair/share, before opening it up to a class-wide discussion in which I would write down and organize their suggestions.

The fact that students have a personal interest in what standard they will be judged by, as well as it being a low-stakes situation for sharing their ideas, should lead to a high level of participation, and I hope a greater commitment to the resulting assignments that the rubric will be applied to.

I am unlikely to have decided to try this without the example and feedback from Kyllikki Rytov in my group, who has successfully used this approach in her own classes.

The remaining issues I need to decide before implementing this are:

• How much guidance to give the students:
  • e.g.
    • Should I decree that the rubric scale will be 1-5, or let them decide?
    • Should I tell them the four characteristics/dimensions I have used before (rational persuasiveness, accuracy, writing mechanics, and originality), or let them come up with their own?
• How much time to allot to each step of this in class.
• Whether to break it up into more steps or fewer.
• How to make the instructions as clear and unintimidating and potentially fun as possible.

If anyone has advice or suggestions, I’d love to hear it!

The Artifact in Progress:

Instructions

For four weeks of the term, you will be asked to submit a short argument in which you take and defend a position regarding an issue covered in recent class readings and discussion. In the week after submitting an argument, you will also be asked to read and evaluate some of your fellow students’ arguments. Today’s task is to create the rubric for how you will score (or be scored) for these arguments.

[Give quick example of a basic rubric, e.g. “Handwriting” – 1=completely illegible, 2=can only be read with effort, 3=legible, 4=easy to read, 5=easy to read and beautiful to look at]

[Three minutes]

Take a few minutes now and think about what is needed, generally, in a good piece of argumentative writing.

Write these down.

If you have time, see if you can identify broad categories that could organize the items in your list. Draw lines, mark with colors, or put a symbol to mark things that you think belong to the same category.

[10 minutes]

Next, get together with a classmate or two and compare lists. Establish which of you will share them with the class.

See if you can identify and agree on four or five broad categories that cover the items in your lists (e.g. ‘good grammar,’ ‘correct spelling,’ ‘enjoyable to read,’ and so on might all fall under a category like “clear writing” or “good communication of ideas”).  These would be the ‘Dimensions’ in the left-hand column of the rubric. Write these down.

Discuss what you believe should count as a 1 (lowest), 2, 3, 4, and 5 (highest) for each of these dimensions on the rubric. Take notes on what you think the criteria should be for each score that could be given on the rubric. That is, if a “3” is given for a particular Dimension, what specifically does that mean, in terms of that Dimension? If you were given a 4, how should you understand it, or if you give a 2, how should the student receiving that score understand it?

[15 minutes]

Get together as a class and share your ideas. I will write down all of the suggestions, then consolidate and edit them to make the rubric you will be using for the Evaluations portion of this assignment.

Short Argument Evaluation Rubric

Dimensions	1	2	3	4	5