In this article, we’re exploring how ChatGPT in Harmonize can help you develop better rubrics for assessment that lead to greater student success.
So many things once seemed impossible: cordless phones, cooking without direct flame (hello, microwaves!), and cars powered by batteries, just a few. Now, add to the list assessing student performance more objectively using rubrics for assessment without the time and hassle spent developing those rubrics. How?
AI-generated rubrics for assessment in Harmonize…if you ever spent countless hours writing rubrics and planning workshops only to have instructors choose NOT to use them, then this is for you. If you ever wanted to grade students in a more objective way, against criteria specific to your assignment but didn’t have the time or patience to focus on rubric generation, then this is for you.
Whether your building online course discussion prompts or other student assignments, you now have the opportunity to leverage custom-built rubrics to assess each student’s performance. We know what you’re thinking! …Not more rubrics for assessment…they’re tedious, often too generic, require a lot of copying & pasting to work for your assignment, and time-consuming to build and understand.
We agree.
That’s why we’ve made rubric generation and assessing students easier than ever. Simply type the assignment instructions and expectations you have for students, and in just one click, ChatGPT in Harmonize will read those instructions and pull out the top four focus areas for what student success looks like on this assignment.
You can then use those focus areas as is or add to or edit them, and then choose to surface those focus areas to students before they begin the assignment. Research shows that providing students with success criteria before they perform an assignment significantly improves their performance. Plus, the use of success criteria during formative assessment has been linked to increased academic confidence, a stronger sense of belonging, and a better mastery of skills. Now, what if you take that a step further and turn those focus areas into a gradable rubric.
When you generate a full rubric for assessment from those focus areas, you not only present students with a complete view of your intentions behind this assignment, you also provide a path to growth and success on this assignment. A rubric with full descriptions for each level of each criteria along with the focus is not presented front and center for each student, setting them up for success and setting instructors up for easier assessment.
A full rubric is generated in a little over 20 seconds. Instructors can edit any element of the rubric for assessment or focus areas, and students have a clearer idea of the purpose and expectations around this assignment.
At the heart of your course is student learning. And students achieve your learning outcomes and course objectives through both formative and summative assessment as well as constructive, ongoing feedback. That part will never change.
How we get there is.
Evaluating students’ work and their understanding of course material, as well as providing constructive feedback on what students did well and where they can improve is time consuming. But when you add in the time it takes to prepare for that kind of assessment of student work, it can become overwhelming. In fact, according to the American Faculty Association, instructors spend up to 4 hours of out-of-class time preparing and assessing students for each hour of a class, which holds just as true for online, hybrid, or blended learning. Data showed that teaching an online course requires anywhere from 3 to 7 or more hours per week — of course, that varies by discipline, experience level, and whether or not you’ve taught this course before.
In just 20 seconds, we generate the rubric for you based on your assignment and have it available for grading right within your LMS, without having to do any copying or pasting! When you use ChatGPT in Harmonize to develop rubrics and ease that assessment process, there’s more time to focus on continuous student improvement.
It’s your course. You know it best and how students should perform. That’s why we put you in the driver’s seat and leave the heavy lifting to Harmonize.
After you add your course discussion or assignment instructions, our AI engine scans the assignment for the four most important themes and from these puts together key focus areas for students and then the complete rubric for assessment (optional). From start to finish, you’ve completed your assessment prep in just 60 seconds. You can now focus that time on feedback, assessing student performance, and preparing new instructional materials. In addition to saving time and assigning grades in a more systematic way, you’ll:
When you grade students using Harmonize’s rubrics, grades sync seamlessly with your LMS so you never have to cut and paste, transfer graders, or switch systems.
You know the old drill…you’re faced with a large grid of criteria and definitions and a wall of empty cells that need descriptions — a daunting task for anyone! It often ends up as hard to understand for instructors and hard to apply for students. Now, do it over and over again for a multitude of classes and it becomes impossible to customize for each course and each assignment.
Then comes the 3-day long workshops and professional development institutes to discuss and train faculty on rubric development and use, only to have your well-built rubrics stuck in rounds of review or not used at all.
We know building rubrics for assessment and getting instructors to use them can be nightmarish. But it doesn’t have to be anymore. Based on sound pedagogy and coached by Harmonize, our AI-powered rubric builder will help you:
When you remove the common barriers to rubric use for instructors — including the manual work and costs in time and capacity to learn how to use your rubrics — you’ll find yourself with better quality assessment and greater opportunities for student retention and success.
The bottom line is that having access to the tools is paramount to effective online teaching learning. As the popularity of online learning continues to rise, choosing technology that is inclusive of different learners’ styles, promotes deeper student engagement, and takes advantage of artificial intelligence to help instructors more easily steer students toward growth is more important than ever.
To do all of this, some institutions rely on a variety of disconnected tools, some of which aren’t fully integrated with the LMS — creating additional barriers for instructors and making it more difficult to take full advantage of a tool’s capability. But with Harmonize, you have a full suite of online engagement, collaboration, discussion and assignment tools that leverage the power of AI and seamlessly integrate with your LMS — all of which lead to quality instruction and better outcomes. It’s everything an instructor needs to be able to focus their time on what matters most: student success.
What’s Rubric Coaching? Well, you know nudging, right?…That reminder text to make your upcoming dental appointment. That email showing your electricity use for the month. Making healthier food options more noticeable in the teacher’s lounge or cafeteria. These are all forms of nudging that are designed to help you remember, reflect more deeply, or urge action — which can be extremely helpful in improving results. The same can apply to student performance…coming soon, how nudge technology in Harmonize in the form of a Rubric Coach for Students will help them continuously iterate on their work for better outcomes.
