Blog posts are graded on a 0 – 4 point scale according to the Reflections Blog Post Grading Rubric presented below. Note that both the Post Field and the Subject Line figure into the quality score the post receives.
- Student Self-Evaluations: Every post you submit to your blog (new posts and comments) should end with the quality score (0 – 4 points) you think your post deserves. Place your self-evaluation score in parentheses at the end – like this (4).
- Professor Evaluations: I will record the official 0 – 4 point value for each blog post (up to the maximum of 12 per student) as I read it. At the conclusion of each module, I will update your gradebook with your final grade on each blog activity, and provide you with a record of how many posts you submitted and your total quality score.
|
Points |
Interpretation |
Grading Criteria |
|
4 |
Excellent (A) |
The blog post is posted on time and responds to the questions that guide the specific blog assignment in the course. The post is thoughtful, original, relevant, and provides insight to your learning and your engagement with your classmates, the activities, and course content. It also provides feedback and suggestions on how and what would improve the course and your own learning. Four point posts are reflections on your learning process in the course and that also reflect, apply, report, explain, defend, refute, question, self-assess, summarize, synthesize, and analyze your engagement with course content and as a member of our class community. Four point posts make your thinking and learning visible, are supported by specific references from course discussions, the course manual, the presentations, the courses for observation/interviews, course readings, diigo resources and/or external sources and also incorporate specific suggestions on how the course and your learning might be improved. Any references, links, and citations are bookmarked, highlighted, tagged, and commented on in our diigo shared references group. The post is tagged with the module from the course with which it is associate, is self-evaluated, and has a meaningful title.
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3 |
Above Average (B) |
The blog post lacks at least one of the above qualities, but is above average in quality. A three point post makes a significant contribution to our understanding of you, your learning process, your feedback, and your thinking about the course content.
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|
2 |
Average (C) |
The blog post lacks two or three of the required qualities. Comments that are based upon personal opinion or personal experience often fall within this category.
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|
1 |
Minimal (D) |
The blog post presents little or no reflection or insight. However, one point comments may provide important social presence and contribute to a sense of class community. Supportive comments often fall within this category.
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|
0 |
Unacceptable (F) |
The blog post adds no value to our understanding of you, your learning process, your feedback, or your thinking about the course content.
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Subject Line |
No penalty |
The post title is a complete sentence and conveys the main point of the post. The reader clearly understands the main point of the post before reading it.
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-1 |
Minor problem with subject line |
The post title provides key word(s) only. The reader knows the general area that the post deals with.
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-2 |
Major problem with subject line |
The post title provides little or no information about the post. |
The Reflections Blog Grading Scale
|
Blog Grade |
Total Quality Points |
Additional Requirement |
|
A+ |
40+ |
At least eight 4-point ratings. |
|
A |
31-39 |
At least four 4-point ratings. |
|
B |
25-30 |
At least four 3 or 4-point ratings. |
|
C |
12-24 |
At least four 2, 3, or 4-point ratings. |
|
D |
6-11 |
None. |
|
F |
1-5 |
None. |
|
0 |
0 |
None. |
Cory Doctorow makes a good case at http://www.thomascrampton.com/dalian/how-to-be-an-uber-blogger-by-cory-doctorow/has some that the titles of blogposts shouldn’t usually be complete sentences.
Hi Michael! thanks for the link it is a great resource of best blogging practices.
For my course, the purpose of the blog is as a metacognitive journaling activity, to get students to reflect on their learning, to make their thinking and feelings visible to me, to show me how they are interpreting the course content, applying it, refuting it, etc. And to demonstrate to me what and how they are learning and how the process and experience could be improved. To achieve that i have chosen to impose the subject line criteria as part of the way that their posts are evaluated. From an andragogical perspective the post titles become advanced organizers that assist the readers to know what they are going to read about in advance, and are a mechanism used to get the writers to synthesize an abstract of the content of their post into an single sentence. There are teaching and learning benefits from both perspectives.
All that to say, that i am not advocating my rubric criteria as a measure of effective authentic blogging, but rather it is an online journaling learning activity in my course that has very specific requirements with very specific learning objectives. So the purpose is not to teach them to blog per se, but rather to get them to articulate thoughts about how they learn.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to any additional thoughts you may have. I am curious about you and your interests. Care to share?
Hi Alexandra
thanks for sharing your rubric. It’s very useful to me in understanding how you used blogging as a learning/teaching instrument for this particular course.
I note Michael’s comments on blog titling and your response. Vive la difference!
I do have one query, and it relates to whether or not your students had difficulty working out what the ‘qualities’ were in your descriptor statement for the task. Perhaps it’s unfamiliarity with the rubric on my part (we tend not to use rubric formats in the Australian higher education sector), but I would have found a bulleted list of ‘qualities’ of use in determining the focus of my response and clarifying the evaluation I would eventually receive.
Many thanks again for your generosity in sharing.
Collegially …
hi kate!
thanks for your comment and your reply in seesmic.
You ask about the students ease with the rubric…my students didn’t say that they had any difficulties with it (or appear to have problems with it), so not sure if they would have preferred a bulleted list or not.
What is interesting to me about your question is that i thought about it when i was writing it and decided against defining it better/more clearly… in part because i was somewhat uncertain about the activity, and didn’t want to be so locked down in case i needed flexibility… now after having had the experience with it, i would definitely make it clearer…more specific… bullets will do the trick nicely. It would definitely make it easier to use from the student, as well as from the instructor’s perspective.
so here is my start on bulleting the qualities of a #4 blog post: ( i see them falling into 4 major chunks)
1. The blog post is thoughtful, original, relevant, and provides insight to your learning and your engagement with your classmates, the activities, and course content.
2. It also provides feedback and suggestions on how and what would improve the course and your own learning.
3. Four point posts are reflections on your learning process in the course that apply, report, explain, defend, refute, question, self-assess, summarize, synthesize, and analyze your engagement with course content and as a member of our class community.
4. Four point posts make your thinking and learning visible,
supported by specific references from course discussions, the course manual, the presentations, the courses for observation/interviews, course readings, diigo resources and/or external sources.
i might also include something about addressing the questions posed for each blogging assignment (fyi – each assignment provided the students with some questions to provide connection and context to course activities and to help guide/frame their blog posts.
for example: reflections blog assignment from module 2
what did you learn? what can you apply?
After viewing the presentation, doing the reading assignments, discussing it all with your classmates, and listening to the introductions and coursemap tours of the courses posted for observation, please reflect on what you have learned. What did you learn that you did not know before? How will you apply what you have learned to your own course? What decisions have you made so far about your own online course? What did you observe about yourself during your own completion of these learning activities? How do you interact? What is working for you? What would you change/suggest to make it better for you?
so what do you think Kate? better?
Thanks for posting this rubric. I’m thinking about how to adapt it for an online ESL study and writing practice group. I’m still in the thinking about stage but a few points come to mind: no grades or gradebook just evaluation; a few simple writing related points; additional reader (another student to introduce / familiarize them with modified peer review). I like the subject line criteria as a way to sneak in the organizing that can evolve into topic sentences and the dreaded TS
Hey Vanessa… some how i missed your comment. glad you like the rubric – cool! I would love to see a your adapted rubric some time : )
Hey Alex,
Would it be alright if I shared your rubric with some of my faculty? Could they adapt it for their use? How would you like them to provide you with attribution?
I always appreciate your great work!
Best,
Carol
sure! : ) adapted from http://etap640.edublogs.org/2008/06/02/reflections-blog-post-grading-rubric/ with permission from Alexandra M. Pickett.