Are Rubrics Stunting Student Creativity? How to Help Students Reduce Grade Fixation and Promote Creativity.
As a college teacher, I have observed exciting technology trends in my career. Trends such as faster computer speeds, decreases in the cost of computing, analog to digital mixing practice, and t transition from desktop to mobile computing are the most prolific to date. However, an interesting trend right now is the rubric fixation. More students are asking for detailed rubrics on creative assignments. Is the rubric removing the creativity out of projects?
What is a Rubric?
According to the TLTgroup, “A Rubric shows how learners will be assessed or graded. In other words, a rubric provides a clear guide as to how ‘what learners do’ in a course will be assessed”. It also “set the direction for desired learning outcomes, and the concepts were chosen for assessment pave the way for the knowledge and skills that general education seeks.”
(LUTNÆS, 2018). Without rubrics, students often “interpreted assignments according to the minimums thought necessary to earn our desired grade” (Chapman and Inman, 2009). Chapman and Inman also state that students would often do more than required “just to be safe.”
In my early teaching days, the projects I assigned were very open-ended and allowed for a lot of creative freedom. An example assignment might prompt a student to compose a piece of music inspired by a picture we viewed in class. Student submissions would range from hip hop, rock, jazz, or even EDM. But in more recent years, students would balk at the assignment’s openness and request detailed rubrics before completing the project. At first, I suspected that my assignment directions might be unclear. However, as the semesters started and ended, more students in different classes kept asking for rubrics. Some students experienced anxiety and grade fixation when they didn’t see a rubric included with the assignment description.
So, I added rubrics to all of my assignments for the next semester. I found that students were doing what was listed on the rubric, forgetting all the prep work needed to get to the point of the assignment. For example, if we were doing a module on EQ, the student would only insert EQs and skip doing a rough mix before adding EQ. The student would then say, “well, the rough mix wasn’t on the rubric.” The problem as a teacher is, the student is correct. So, how much was the rough mix now worth in the overall grade scheme when the focus was EQ? Why was I spending time grading prior knowledge when the focus was on EQ? Do I need to put everything in the rubric now?!
Transparency in Grading
Let’s look at one purpose of a rubric. A rubric gives transparency to grading. It can outline the criteria for how the teacher will grade the assignment. “One consistent theme running through these recommendations is the characteristic of transparency. In the context of teaching and learning in higher education, transparency is the act of making explicit to students the underlying—and often hidden—features of the learning environment (Winkelmes, 2013). Instructors who adopt a transparency framework clearly and consistently articulated to their students what they are learning, why they might want to learn those things, and how they might best navigate learning experiences to ensure success.”(Palmer, Gravett, LeFleur, 2018).
But are rubrics hindering the creative process? Richard Byrne says suggest this may be so. In my classes, some students focused on checking down the list of grading requirements rather than explore the possibilities of creating a unique piece of music. “Rubrics can become barriers to creativity and fall short when they provide a stopping point – where, once each component is checked, the assignment is done and learning, and creation stop.” (Byrne, 2013). There is a need for grading transparency. Can we be grade transparent and still assess creativity? Can we use a rubric to help guide the student to be creative?
Shift to Purpose Driven
In the book, The Purposeful Classroom, Fisher and Frey say that “An established purpose alerts learners to important information and garners their attention while helping teachers decide how best to use their instructional time.” In other words, when students understand the purpose of the lesson or assignment, they learn more and apply creativity. Since moving towards a more purpose-focused assignment paradigm, I have found that student engagement in the classroom has increased since they now have to concentrate on properly using the tools rather than just merely using and inserting them.
In music technology education, it is easy to focus on technical competency rather than purpose. Let’s take the example of signal processing: we want students to learn how to use equalization (EQ). Often, a lesson plan will require students to put an EQ into the signal path of a track (Kick Drum, for example). The assessment for this lesson is often just looking to see if the student put the EQ into the right track and not whether the student used the EQ with purpose. Rather than assessing whether the student inserted an EQ onto a track without any reasoning behind it, we should test if they know why they are putting an EQ on that track. But the assessment is time-consuming on both the design and the grading aspects. It requires teachers to engage with each assignment fully and interpret the intent behind the EQ. Interpretation, however, is non-transparent. So, we are right back to where we started, looking for a rubric for grading transparency.
Let’s first look at how we can grade creativity. Andrew Miller suggests looking at these quality indicators to guide assessment:
Synthesize ideas in original and surprising ways.
Ask new questions to build upon an idea.
Brainstorm multiple ideas and solutions to problems.
Communicate ideas in new and innovative ways.
So once we remove the technical and operational components from the assessment, what is left is how the students use the tool. We as teachers are giving the student licence to be creative and find new ways of doing things. But with this assessment, the students need some basis for how something should be properly EQ’d and what is inappropriate.
We have to try to avoid turning the lesson into best practice instruction. I am not sure if that’s the intent of music technology education. If we only teach best practices, then there is no diversity of approach. Diversity of approach leads to practice and style advancements in our industry. To avoid this pitfall, we should be focusing on delivering the purpose of the assignment and assessment to the students. This practice will also result in grade transparency.
If we only teach best practices, then there is no diversity of approach.
Purpose focused assignments
Here is an example of how I structure a lesson on using EQ.
1) Teach minimal operation of the equipment.
The operation of the EQ should be minimal instruction and more experiential. All I want to teach the students is:
a) How to insert an EQ onto a track, and
b) explain what each knob does and how to turn them.
The students will get plenty of experience on how to operate the EQ by actually using the EQ! Let them explore!
2) Explore
The experiential portion should be the student exploring how each button and knob changes the sound.
3) Show examples of bad-sounding tracks.
Here I might show some examples of both overprocessed and under processed tracks from my work.
4) Show examples of good sounding tracks
Here I might show some examples that both the client and I thought were “good” sounding tracks.
5) EQ a given set of drum tracks
Here, we will be looking for balance and clarity. In an assignment like this, I would define balance and clarity for the students. The balance would be “none of the other instruments are too loud over another.” Clarity would be “each instrument has its frequency spectrum. Nothing is muddy, and nothing sounds too brittle”.
As you can see, none of this instruction shows best practice. Also, none of the instructions shows how to achieve good sound step by step. But there is some talk about aesthetics. We can talk about what is acceptable in terms of processing and what might be considered overprocessed. We can also talk about achieving a particular sound, but there is no “turn this dial to 6.5, and this one to 9” instruction. I also realize in this example that there are some subjective terms, but I take time to identify them and even define what those terms might mean.
Grading
A rubric only gives the student your criteria for grading the homework. But disclosing the rubric can lead to “objective fixation,” where the student only fulfills the rubric’s requirements and loses sight of the quality of the composition. Giving the students a clear purpose for the homework will lead to more creative assignments. We want the students to focus on using the tools rather than just using the device for usage’s sake. Here would be an example of the rubric I would use on the previous assignment.
An example of a rubric taking into account creativity and critical feedback.
Set them up for creativity.
This type of rubric puts the student in a position to be creative using the tool. The transparency is in the notes section. Here we can identify which instruments might need more adjustment or give more explicit instructions on which knobs to adjust and suggest settings for them. However, this comes after the exploration and attempt on the assignment.
Grading for creativity is a challenge and is time-consuming but results in more original and innovative assignments. The students might not follow best practices, but that might lead to innovation or even new best practices. The best thing we can do in education is set the student up for success and let them climb the steps on their own, rather than giving them an escalator to the minimum standard.
Dr. Mike Testa
