ABSTRACT
Good course and unit design processes continuously and consciously maintain sight of the desired quality of student work. After all, high-quality student learning is the reason teachers put effort into unit design or redesign. Rubrics precisely spell out the criteria and standards by which students’ work is to be judged. Without explicit criteria for completing the assessment task it is probable that many students will put a great deal of effort into something teachers do not expect or want to receive. This is problematic from the point of view of both the students and teachers/assessors. All teachers wish to receive good-quality work from students, but much of the work of an assessment task is done outside of the direct supervision. For assessments that are completed by students outside of “class” time, the accompanying rubric needs to be one that provides this explicit detail, and to be something that allows for students to self-check as they are completing the task.
