Democratizing Assessment Rubrics
UKCISA-funded qualitative research on how international students understand and use assessment rubrics.
At King’s Business School, I supported Dr Chahna Gonsalves’s UKCISA-funded research aimed at supporting first-year undergraduate international students in assessment by enhancing engagement with assessment rubrics and developing academics’ ability to design effective rubrics with international students in mind.
I assisted by conducting focus groups, preparing transcripts and thematically coding student responses to assessment criteria. The analysis identified recurring barriers in assessment literacy, including unfamiliar terminology, uncertainty about the difference between grade bands, and difficulty connecting rubric language with feedback and examples of work.
The project considered how rubrics are introduced and discussed within teaching, as well as the wording and structure of the documents themselves.
The findings were used to produce to poster guides for enhancing assessment literacy among international students, one aimed at staff and one aimed at students.
The resulting paper by Dr. Gonsalves is available here.