Rubrics for developing students' professional judgement: A study of sustainable assessment in arts education

Abstract

The participation of students in assessment is known to generate higher-order learning outcomes. This study aims to determine the usefulness of rubrics in aiding the incorporation of undergraduate students into assessor teams for developing their professional judgement. A quasi-experimental study examined the effects of a brief training programme on the use of rubrics, and of the participation of students in rubric creation and moderation discussions. We calculated Cronbach’s alphas, and intraclass correlation coefficients in order to examine the intra- and inter-rater reliability between all the members of the assessor teams. The results demonstrate that only participation in the rubric design and in the moderation discussions regulating their use helped undergraduate students to develop sound assessment skills. We infer that rubrics can help to promote professional judgement if they are conceived as instructional resources for defining and supporting the processes of negotiation and agreement that characterize an assessment culture.