[social_share/] [social-bio] As an Instructional Designer, I often speak on the value of assessment rubrics. There are many reasons why creating a rubric for each assignment, providing students with the rubric, and using the rubric while grading can be advantageous. Many of these reasons are highlighted in the video below, including: You write the same comments on several assignments You decide how to assess after the assignments are handed in You realize after grading a few papers that your students didn’t understand the assignment expectations (Stevens & Levi, 2005) Knowing about these reasons for rubrics, I sat down last fall to create few rubrics for the assignments in an undergraduate…

[social_share/] [social-bio] Following on Heather’s post last week about the key (and required) elements of the syllabus at the University of Sasaktchewan, I wanted to add a point of emphasis that I think saves time, saves confusion, and may even save you some heartache. That point is: be explicit with your students about your expectations. Sometimes, as instructors, we may forget that we too  had to learn about academic expectations and norms.   If we were lucky, we caught on quickly, probably in our first or second years of undergraduate study.   Our new students (new to our disciplines, our institution, our jargon, our everyday language, our Saskatchewan and/or Canadian…