Reimagining rubrics through MetaRubric
By Jason Colombino
Jason Columbino is the principal of Danvers High School in Danvers, MA and was a fellow in the INSPIRE program at MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab. Here he describes his experiences using MetaRubric in his teacher education course.
Supporting Teachers: As a high school principal, I am always looking to improve the tools we make available to educators to practice their craft. I want to be able to have teachers share their experiences with others, with an emphasis on expanding those opportunities to work with colleagues from different departments. I also want to make the lessons learned and work done more transparent. When I learned about practice spaces, I felt that they could be opportunities for both pre and in service teachers to improve their practice. I also aim to add case consultancies and other protocols to support professionals in building their collaboration skills on current and relevant problems of practice. I believe these types of practice spaces can not only build the collective capacity of our school, but also improve experiences and outcomes for students.
MetaRubric: Metarubric is a game designed by the MIT Teaching Systems Lab that focuses on providing teachers a fun and playful space to explore characteristics of a strong rubric, as well as space to reflect on their own assessment practices. The game begins with a group of 3–5 players deciding on a movie they all like. In round 1, each player then creates a poster for the movie, and then creates a rubric for movie posters. The group generates a rubric from the individual rubrics and assesses each of the movie posters. In round 2, each player creates a rubric for rubrics, or a MetaRubric. The group then creates one MetaRubric to assess the original rubrics on. There are also reflection questions for the group at the end of each round.
My Experience with MetaRubric: In the fall of 2018, I taught a class on Teaching and Learning Strategies for Inclusive Education offered by Boston College. For one of the class meetings, we played MetaRubric with 14 Catholic Education educators (2 administrators and 12 teachers).
Prior to playing, we brainstormed a list of formative assessments used in the classroom. The group also evaluated the strength of each assessment type, which was one of the activities in the Meta Rubric Curriculum Activities document. The conversation brought up a number of interesting perceived tensions in education. For example, standard-based grading and project-based learning was perceived as either/or concepts by the class. Having this brainstorm was a helpful entry point into framing the Meta Rubric game, and provided some context around the types of assessment we use and what characteristics of learning we value in education.
We split the class into three groups to play MetaRubric. The groups all worked diligently on the task and enjoyed the activity. In general, during round 1 there was more laughter and groups enjoyed the work, especially the task of creating movie posters. During Round 1 I checked in with each group, but the game basically ran itself, with each group following the directions and clearly understanding what was being asked of them. While it might seem like a small, even insignificant, observation, the fact that the teachers all jumped into the game and were collaborating, laughing and having fun together in such a short time, spoke to the value of MetaRubric for me as a teacher educator. Too often, professional development opportunities can start off for an hour or more of a focus lesson or direct instruction before the participants have a chance to be fully engaged in the learning. MetaRubric flips this script, and allows teachers to be part of the learning, even drivers of their own learning, right from the get go.
Something happened during Round 2: you could hear a pin drop in the classroom! There was a very had serious tone in the room, as the groups struggled (in a good way) around coming to a consensus on elements/characteristics of a strong rubric. I would recommend allowing groups to struggle with the directions in round 2 so that they can work together to understand that the task is to evaluate characteristics of rubrics. While round 2 resulted in some impressive conversations around curriculum, instruction and assessment, round 2 seemed to be less fun. My best guess is round 2 is more demanding and really pushes teachers to think about rubrics in ways that they are not typically asked to do. Having the space to have these crucial conversations is another strength of MetaRubric and why I am highly recommending leveraging this game for professional development in classes and for in service teachers of all experience levels.
As a homework assignment, each participant completed reflection questions (from the MetaRubric Curriculum Activities document) through a google form. Students also identified an existing rubric they used in class and applied what they learned to make revisions to that rubric. I believe providing students with a follow up task directly related to MetaRubric also helped make the game relevant and helped students connect the game to the important topics of assessment and learning.
Completing MetaRubric in a smaller setting helped me feel more prepared and excited about implementing the game with teacher teams at the school where I work at. MetaRubric is a well designed and valuable tool for teacher educators at all levels to utilize. The game in and of itself provide a relatively efficient (in terms of time and needed resources) way to get teachers to have critical conversations around their own teaching practices. MetaRubric also creates conditions for important conversations around what and how we assess student learning and work products.
