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Example of good practice in online assessment

Using rubrics to provide detailed feedback for open-ended assessments

Neville Hurst

Neville Hurst - School of Management and Marketing

This example describes how rubrics have provided an effective and flexible assessment and feedback tool in a unit with open-ended assessments.

About the unit

MMP221Property Management aims to develop students' skills and knowledge about managing large-scale property assets on behalf of client investors.

Property management is a combination of technical skills and knowledge (eg negotiation and development of leases) and intangible skills of being able to meet the needs of opposing entities (landlords and tenants).

Assessment

I decided to use a problem-based learning approach in this unit and set two assignments. The first required students to select a research project from a list and investigate contemporary issues impacting on that field of property management, explaining how the issues are/are not being addressed and what they would do if they were in a position of influence. The second required students to select two shopping centres, study the retail mix offered, investigate the centres' target demographics and make recommendations on how trade turnover could be improved.

I was keen to give students freedom to use their initiative in developing their ideas and justifying their recommendations. To do this I needed a flexible assessment tool that captured the learning outcomes but did not overly direct the structure or the content. I found the rubric to be an excellent tool for assessing learning outcomes of this nature.

Rubrics

The rubrics were structured with the rows being the learning outcomes - 4 to 5 learning outcomes were sufficient - and the columns being the increasing levels of quality. This way, students could see very clearly what they had to do to achieve high scores. I gave a higher weighting of marks to the learning outcomes I wished to emphasise.

I used a grade range in each band of quality to take into account when students did some things well and others not so well. I found this part took a few iterations to get right, but it was important so that students were able to feel they had received a fair assessment.

Benefits to teaching and learning

In my view the benefits of using rubrics were many, including:

They promoted me to reflect on exactly what it is I wanted students to achieve and learn out of the assessment task.
They promoted consistency in marking as I was always reflecting back to a set of identifiable learning outcomes.
Being online, they enabled me to mark wherever I was, and students could pick up their feedback quickly.
I was better able to understand how students saw the task and consequently I refined parts of the written assessment requirements.
Feedback from students was positive.