RUBRICS AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN ASSESSMENT AND LEARNING: AN EXPERIENCE IN A BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

In the European Higher Education Area, Universities have begun to describe their modules and study programmes in terms of learning outcomes which describe what a learner is expected to know, understand and be able to do after successful completion of a process of learning. Moreover, employability is a very important criterion in curricular development and one of the goals driving the Bologna process is preparing graduates for the labour market. In this context, effective writing is a vital skill for environmental professionals, who should be able to create good quality reports. For students, writing is an incomparable opportunity to be creative and to demonstrate that they can think for themselves. Writing also helps students to improve their ability to express their ideas in a way that can be understood by others.
In this study, the authors present the work with students from the Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Sciences, to improve their writing skills by preparing laboratory reports that follow the conventions of the literature. In order to motivate students, and give them greater confidence in the objectivity and transparency of the marking process, an analytical rubric has been developed. Using rubrics provides students with more informative feedback about their strengths and areas in need of improvement and allow students self-assessment. Moreover, the rubric provides a tool very useful for learning, as it is a guide about contents and presentation.
As this is the second year since the degree establishment in the Universitat Politècnica de Valéncia (Spain), rubrics have been utilized with first and second year students in the 2010/11 academic year. In this first pilot experience, a rubric with only two grades, correct and incorrect, has been developed. This is because the authors think that is better to keep it simple. Although the rubric has been elaborated thinking in the presentation of laboratory reports, it could be applied to any other type of report that learners should prepare whereas with academic character or later in their professional life. The work has been carried out with the help of an Educational Innovation Project, from the Universitat Politècnica de Valéncia. This project has been the result of a coordination effort between the Chemistry and the Hydraulic Engineering and Environment Departments, which are the main departments involved in the Degree.