Peripheries and Praxis: The Effect of Rubric Co-Construction on Student Perceptions of their Learning

Abstract

The construction of assessment rubrics is often educator-centric as lecturers work in isolation to compose grading tools. While there is a pedagogical goal to construct instruments that align with learning outcomes and guide the assessment of students’ learning, students are often at the periphery of this process. In many higher education institutions, students are accustomed to receiving assessment feedback but they are not, typically, active participants in the feedback cycle. Increasingly, institutions are seeking evidence of greater student engagement in their tertiary learning experience. Accordingly, academics seek to innovate practice and enhance curricula by creating more opportunities for student involvement, thus creating a shared understanding of it and associated assessment tasks. Responding to a gap in rubric construction practice, this paper discusses an Office for Learning and Teaching Innovation and Development Grant research project where students moved from being rubric users to being central participants in collaborative design. Drawing on data collected from a team of rubric co-constructors from one Sydney university campus – first year students and an academic in a creative non-fiction writing subject – we set out to answer the following question: What effect does the co-construction and use of rubrics have on students’ perceptions of their learning?