Would you share your 3-point rubric?
Yes, please
I have a five-point rubric, although I usually use only three of the values. (Scores of 1 or 5 are quite rare.) I use this rubric for each and every student post on the discussion boards. Here's how it works:
1 point = "Me too" post (e.g., anything that in essence says, "I (dis)agree with what Tom said" without elaboration. Essentially, this post gets a point to recognize that the student did the very bare minimum, by posting, but that the post was wholly inadequate. (The syllabus specifically disallows "me too" posts, so I don't get too many in this category.)
2 points = The post elaborates or expounds, but doesn't really add anything new to the discussion. That is, the student has said more than "me too," but the elaboration is, at its core, a rehash or states the very obvious or repeats things directly from the lecture or readings, etc.--and does not even do that very well. This student may be trying harder than than the one-point student, but a two-point post is still substandard.
3 points = This is an average post. The student has something to say and says it, but without anything "extra" to deserve more than the baseline of 3 points.
4 points = This is a good post that goes the extra mile. This post brings in outside reading, for example. (As part of their workload, my students are supposed to (a) explore a wide variety of websites, some that I point them toward and others that they find themselves, and (b) keep abreast of late-breaking news, which often has a bearing on the topics under discussion.) Alternatively (or in addition), the post provides a level of analysis beyond mere presentation of fact or opinion, tying together or contrasting different perspectives or adding original thought in some other way.
5 points = This is an excellent post, one as good as or better than one I could have written. It has a thorough and sensible analysis, brings in outside points, ties together or contrasts perspectives, and/or in some other way stands out as something a professional could have written. These are rare, but there have been a few posts that qualified.
So, using this rubric, I grade every single post. (I usually go through all the new posts once or twice a week.) In my gradebook (via Excel), I have a column for each discussion thread. Within the cell for, say, John Doe (row representing the student) and "Government Basketweaving" (column representing discussion thread), I'll have a formula, with each element representing a post. So, if John Doe posted three times on this thread, that cell will look something like this (the initial equals sign is an Excel requirement for formulas):
=4+2+3 and the total, of course, for that thread, will be 9. Then I do the same thing for John Doe in the next column, which might be "Private Basketweaving." There, John's scores are
=3+1 for two posts (perhaps John had less to say on this thread), for a total of 4. At the end of the semester, I (rather, Excel) adds up the 9 plus the 4 plus the totals of all the other discussion columns, for a semester total of, say, 42. I then use a linear transformation to turn the 42 into a number that I can use in the calculation of the final course grade.
