3.3.7. BEST PRACTICE EXAMPLES
At the University of Aveiro, several teachers use rubrics in the students’ assignments. Even though many create their assessment rubrics from scratch, others resort to templates and examples in open access and personalise them according to the learning outcomes defined for the students’ learning activities. Rubrics can be used to assess the students’ learning that regards the scientific area of a course, but also to assess the students’ development of transversal and transferable competences, which are not always easy to assess, but are more and more relevant for the students’ professional future and broadly valued by the industry and recruiters.
Some resort to a series of high-quality rubrics. Examples are the VALUE rubrics, which were developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and cover fifteen specific areas, namely: civic engagement, creative thinking, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, foundations and skills for lifelong learning, information literacy, inquiry and analysis, integrative and applied learning, intercultural knowledge and competence, oral communication, problem solving, quantitative literacy, reading, teamwork and written communication.
Fig. 1. Example of a oral presentation assessment rubric. Source: Rhodes, T., & Finley, A. (2013). Using the VALUE Rubrics for Improvement of Learning and Authentic Assessment (p. 18), Association of American Colleges and Universities.