Last week I went to the EdSurge “Tech for Schools Summit” in Oakland, California. The purpose of this event was to connect edtech entrepreneurs with educators and facilitate deep dive discussions between the two. The word “rubric” came up often.
Several teachers, at the event, told me “Tech solutions should provide a rubric! ”.
The Glossary of Education Reform defines “rubric” as “a evaluation tool or set of guidelines used to promote the consistent application of learning expectations, learning objectives, or learning standards in the classroom, or to measure their attainment against a consistent set of criteria. In instructional settings, rubrics clearly define academic expectations for students and help to ensure consistency in the evaluation of academic work from student to student, assignment to assignment, or course to course. Rubrics are also used as scoring instruments to determine grades or the degree to which learning standards have been demonstrated or attained by students.
When teaching a unit or facilitating project-based learning, teachers must create their own spreadsheets outlining, goals and learning objectives and assessments for those objectives. Edtech applications often do not include built-in rubrics and the ability for the student and teacher to assess and capture this data online. This information also needs to be within the app, and easy to find, so teachers don’t have to spend lots of time digging.
One big purpose of technology in the classroom is to help free teachers up for what they can do best; provide individual attention to those that need it and attend to the needs of all students.
Providing a rubric for teachers can also help them achieve the goal of “personalized learning” – another important area in education today. According to Susan D. Patrick, the executive director of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Vienna, Va. “Personalized learning in today’s schools essentially amounts to the “differentiation” of lessons for students of different skill levels, or efforts to help students move at their own pace”.
Other questions related to rubrics that teachers had at the EdSurge Summit were:
- “What grading system does your tool support?”
- “Who can create assessments? Is the tool able to connect with 3rd party question banks?”
- ”How much control can teachers have over assessment delivery and/or creation?”
I’m sure you get the idea.
Presently, teachers spend an inordinate amount of time finding appropriate and engaging tools to support their curriculum and typically use many different tools in the course of a semester. Most edtech apps or tools do not have all the things they need. Another teacher told me “Tech is not as responsive as it should be”. It’s a slow learning process, but I’m sure edtech companies can catch up!
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