By Stacie Johnson, Director of Professional Learning
Imagine this: your car after school, the backseat heaving under the weight of upgraded papers. Papers that will come with you while you journey to the grocery store, the dry cleaners, or maybe even a kids’ soccer game. And then into your house and back into your teacher wheelie suitcase on your way back in the door.
Sound like a familiar scene? If it does, that’s because I too, have been party to the paper parade.
Grading, a task that should serve as a compass, guiding us to evaluate student growth, adapt our own instruction, and share meaningful feedback, has turned into a daunting mountain of recording, analysis, and compliance. This mountain induces anxiety—not only in the hearts of our students but also within us, the educators.
But what should grading really be?
Grading should be a tool to propel mastery learning and provide a clear path for subsequent instruction. Most importantly, it should communicate feedback and next steps for our students. But in reality, it often feels like it’s just a drain on our time that prevents us from enjoying our students during the day or enjoying our families during the evening.
What if we dared to change the narrative? What if, instead of obsessing over grades, we shifted our focus to feedback and mastery learning? What if we concentrated our efforts on building student competence and confidence? A wonderful idea, you might say, but one that is surely too time-consuming?
But, what if it wasn’t? What if we could transform the grading process into something meaningful, something that doesn’t just shuttle back and forth in our cars, but instead, drives student success?
AI for teaching: instantly generated rubrics
Rubrics can be the game-changer in this scenario. They provide a clear and concise roadmap for both teachers and students, outlining expectations and offering a structured approach to feedback.
Rubrics empower students by making the grading process transparent, allowing them to understand how their work will be evaluated and what they need to do to improve.
Even in subjects where rubrics aren’t traditionally used, like mathematics, they can be incredibly beneficial. A well-designed math rubric can break down complex problems into understandable components, guiding students through the problem-solving process. It can highlight the importance of logical reasoning, clarity of thought, and precision, aspects often overlooked in the rush to find the ‘right answer.’ Thus, rubrics can transform grading from a source of anxiety into a tool for growth and self-improvement across all subjects.
The power of Khanmigo’s AI rubric maker
Picture this: I’m a math teacher, knee-deep in algebraic equations. I decided to create a rubric, a kind of ‘math recipe,’ if you will. It had four ingredients: understanding the problem, planning a strategy, executing it, and explaining the process to a peer. I shared this ‘recipe’ with my students, and it was like I’d given them a secret decoder ring for math. They knew what was expected and could check their work, find their weak spots, and focus on the process, not just the answer. But gosh, I wish I had Khanmigo back then; turning what took me hours into a quick task.
Khanmigo’s rubric maker is all about giving you, the teacher, more time. With just a few questions for you, it takes on the task of developing rubric categories, criteria, and even provides examples of what work might look like at each level. This means less time spent on making the rubric and more time doing the things that matter: engaging with your students and spending quality time with your family instead of poring over the laptop all evening.
In under four minutes, I can fully customize a rubric—Khanmigo asks what I am teaching and we get to work. Recently I was building a rubric with Khanmigo and needed to revise the descriptions for one of the criteria. I wanted the descriptions to include students’ ability to acknowledge and explain their misconceptions. Check out what I was able to build with Khanmigo:
If there’s a hidden gem in the teaching world, it’s Khanmigo’s rubric tool. Students writing essays? Graphing parabolas? The rubric maker is there for you. No more hours spent creating rubrics or carting ungraded papers around town. It’s time to shift our focus—from grades to feedback, from percentages to thought processes. Discover this secret and transform your teaching—give it a try!
Try Khanmigo’s AI rubric maker for free today!
Embrace the power of AI for teaching and revolutionize the way you grade and provide feedback to your students. Try Khanmigo’s rubric maker (and other tools!) for free, thanks to support from Microsoft, and see the difference it can make in your classroom!
The post Grading frenzy? Khanmigo’s AI rubric maker saves you time and effort appeared first on Khan Academy Blog.
Original Article Published at Khan Academy
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