College and University Grading Rubrics

College and University Grading RubricsCollege and university grades are often a very difficult thing to handle and many times students find themselves creating their own grading rubrics. Grading rubrics can help students learn how to grade their own papers and at the same time help create a more comfortable atmosphere for doing homework.Since the beginning of higher education in the United States, students have been given the choice of grading papers according to an official system or taking it a little further and making their own grading rubrics. College and university grading systems have evolved over the years and with each change has come many new ideas about how to grade papers. Some grading rubrics are informal, while others are formal.Regardless of the grading rubrics you use for your papers, they should be updated as time passes by and older ideas change. Following is a list of some of the more popular grading rubrics used by college and university students:Informal - Writin g about a particular topic will allow a student to explore ideas about a topic and can lead to a deeper understanding of the topic. This makes a great idea for a professor to use on the first or last page of a paper. Any ideas to consider when thinking about informal grading rubrics include:Formal - A formal grading rubric is an attempt to determine how well a student has done in a given subject matter. The rubric can include a description of the difficulty level of the paper and may also attempt to explain the intellectual viewpoint of the writer. For example, in cases of difficult material, such as philosophy, it might be good to include a statement like 'The paper does not present anything that has been found in all of metaphysics.'Informal and formal are both excellent ways to approach grade time. They all attempt to use feedback from the student to determine how well a student has done in a certain paper. Using these two rubrics, it is easy to determine how much work a student needs to do.In most cases, students are aware of the difficulty level of the paper, whether it is a difficult material in class or is something that needs to be applied to real life situations. It is usually better to go with the less formal rubric than go with the more formal rubric. By using a less formal rubric, the student will be able to explain his or her problem and come up with a solution.For difficult ideas, the student may need to employ several methods in order to explain the concept effectively to their classmates. Using an informal grading rubric can be helpful to a student who needs to explain the concept to a smaller group of people.