Assessing Advanced Writing with AAC&U's VALUE Rubric: A Four‐Institution Collaboration

Learning from Unexpected Core Competency Results: A Journey toward Equitable Assessment at the University of the Pacific

“…Faculty and staff scorers for our 2019/2020 assessment cycle perceived student performance to be stronger when responding to some prompts over others. To explore this perception, we first evaluated prompts in relation to best practice criteria in assignment design (Bachen et al 2018; Ewell 2013; Hutchings, Jankowski, and Baker 2018; Suskie 2018). All (nine of nine) or most (seven of nine) of the prompts clarified format, page length, word count and required evidence.…”

Faculty Survey of Student Engagement: What Do Faculty Say About Rubrics?

“…It can be difficult to convince faculty to use national tools, such as the VALUE rubrics, to create or enhance assessment. One advantage that these tools have is the ability to translate between other institutions that use similar tools, allowing educators to compare relatable and reliable outcomes of students at aspirant institutions (Bachen et al 2018). The desire to compare the performance of students may be effective in convincing hesitant faculty to incorporate more widespread rubric models.…”

Board 121: Using Tutor-led Support to Enhance Engineering Student Writing for All

“…The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Written Communication VALUE Rubric was selected because of its proven reliability and use in other research in the field of STEM. The AAC&U VALUE rubrics have a body of work that supports their use for assessing written communication student artifacts [16] [17]. In addition, one of the WATTS team members had been trained on the AAC&U VALUE rubric use and calibration.…”

“…In addition, one of the WATTS team members had been trained on the AAC&U VALUE rubric use and calibration. Like other research utilizing the AAC&U VALUE Rubrics, the research team made minor modifications to the instrument [16] [17]. The modifications were to add a 0 for not present or applicable and change "graceful" language to "highly technical" language due to the STEM nature of writing.…”