AACU Value Rubrics

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AACU Value Rubrics

• Stephen R. Acker
• Emeritus Professor, The Ohio State University
• Director of Learning Technologies, CELLT

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AACU

• American Association of Colleges and Universities
• 1,200 member schools
• Advocates for liberal education (prepared
  thinking)
• Seeks to structure/define essential learning
  outcomes
• Sponsor of the VALUE Project (Valid Assessment of
  Learning in Undergraduate Education)

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The Essential Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and
  Natural World
• Intellectual and Practical Skills
• Personal and Social Responsibility
• Integrative Learning
• AACU LEAP http//www.aacu.org/leap/

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Lifelong Learning Rubric Criteria

• Curiosity
• Initiative
• Independence
• Transfer
• Reflection
• Reviews prior learning with great depth (4) to
  superficially (1) , revealing significantly
  clarified meaning and indicating a significantly
  broader perspective about what happened.

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Creative Thinking Criteria

• Acquiring competencies
• Taking risks
• Solving problems
• Embracing contradictions
• Innovative thinking
• Connecting, synthesizing, transforming

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Seeking reliability and validity (on)

• Criteria
• Innovative Thinking Novelty or Uniqueness (of
  Idea, Claim, Question, Form, etc.)
• Levels (4, 3, 2, 1)
• Performance Indicators (4) Extends a novel or
  unique idea, question, format, or product to
  create new knowledge or knowledge that crosses
  boundaries (3) Creates a novel or unique idea,
  question, format, or product (2) Attempts to
  create a novel or unique idea, question, format,
  or product (1) Relies on existing ideas,
  questions, formats, or products.

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Pornography Rubric (Criteria?)

• Hard-core pornography" is hard to define, but "I
  know it when I see it.
• Potter Stewart (Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964))
• Miller v. California (1973) definition of
  Community Standards

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Rubrics as Community Standards

• AACU invited panels of disciplinary experts to
  construct rubric definitions, criteria and
  performance indicators
• A subsequent, diverse background, panel was then
  asked to validate
• Do the experts and laity agree?
• How do rubrics and criteria correlate?
• Greater reliability on scales/subscales?

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QSort or ordinal data?

• Reliability defined as within one level (4-1) on
  a criteria
• QSort methodology as alternative
• Successive piling into four groups
• Uses internal, comparative standards not
  application of external assessment tools

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Discussion Questions

• Should we develop rubrics as macro meaning or as
  sets of related criteria?
• Under what circumstances do expert communities
  and lay communities agree?
• What are the pros/cons of assigning numeric
  ordinal scores vs. using sorting algorithms?
• Without national standards (vs. local
  concurrences) do we have a viable response to
  standardized tests?

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Contact

• Steve Acker (acker.1_at_osu.edu)
• http//cellt.org