The Graph Rubric: Development of a Teaching, Learning, and Research Tool

Abstract

As undergraduate biology curricula increasingly aim to provide students with access to courses and experiences that engage them in the practices of science, tools are needed for instruction, evaluation, and research around student learning. One of the important skills for undergraduate biology students to master is the selection and creation of appropriate graphs to summarize data they acquire through investigations in their course work and research experiences. Graphing is a complex skill, and there are few, discipline-informed tools available for instructors, students, and researchers to use. Here, we describe the development of a graph rubric informed by literature from the learning sciences, statistics, representations literature, and feedback and use of the rubric by a variety of users. The result is an evidence-based, analytic rubric that consists of categories essential for graph choice and construction: graph mechanics, graph communication, and graph choice. Each category of the rubric can be evaluated at three levels of achievement. Our analysis demonstrates the potential for the rubric to provide formative feedback to students and allow instructors to gauge and guide learning and instruction. We further discuss and identify potentially interesting research targets for science education researchers.

The Academic Career Readiness Assessment: Clarifying Hiring and Training Expectations for Future Biomedical Life Sciences Faculty

“…The overall instrument design methodology used to develop and validate the ACRA rubric is presented in Table 1. It follows multiple stages of instrument validation that involve 1) reviewing the literature and consulting with experts to begin to define and operationalize the construct, 2) conducting expert interviews to establish internal validity of the instrument, and 3) pilot testing the rubric to continue collecting evidence of validity related to the relationship with external variables (Benson, 1998;Sullivan, 2011;Artino et al, 2014;Angra and Gardner, 2018). Our study focuses mainly on the first two stages of instrument development and begins to address the third stage.…”

“…To develop our instrument, we adapted instrument development methods described in the literature and used by others ( Benson, 1998 ; Sullivan, 2011 ; Artino et al. , 2014 ; Angra and Gardner, 2018 ). However, this study stands out methodologically from classical instrument development studies, because the literature defining our construct, academic career readiness , is limited, and definitions vary widely across fields.…”

Graphing Model of Prediction Data for Occupational Incidents in Chemical And Gas Industries

“…A scatter plot is a type of chart that consists of multiple data points representing different factors plotted across two axes from the data table [2]. Each data point depicted from the data table in a scatter plot might have multiple observations.…”

“…Constant is a value that does not change, while a characteristic, number, or quantity that increases or decreases over time or takes different values in different situations is called variable. Due to unchangeable property, the constant is not used and only variable is used for summary measures and analysis [2].…”

The Academic Career Readiness Assessment: Clarifying training expectations for future life sciences faculty

“…A common measure of validity used in rubric development is inter-rater reliability (IRR), where instruments with IRR values of 80% or higher are considered reliable ( 16 ) . Our results show a high IRR score for the Final ACRA rubric in all three groups of institutions (T, RT, and R), from 80% for Baccalaureate colleges (RT group) to 100% for Master's colleges (Larger programs, RT group).…”