Effects of a rubric: Values of a test, motivation for learning, and learning strategies

Abstract

In the present study, effects of telling students about the grading standards for a test and the test's purpose were investigated by presenting a rubric to the students. Eighth-grade students (N = 101) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 classrooms, each of which corresponded to an experimental condition. The students studied mathematics for 5 sessions. At the end of each session, the students took a test on that day's lecture. The experimental variable was the method of feedback of their test results, specifically, a rubric condition, a rubric plus comments condition, and a comments-only condition. The results indicated that the students who had received the rubric were more likely to consider the purpose of the test to be their improvement, had higher intrinsic motivation, used more deep-processing strategies and fewer surface-processing strategies, and achieved higher scores on the tests than the students who had not received the rubric. In addition, results from a path analysis suggested that the rubric influenced the students' motivation, their strategies, and their test scores via values of the test. The results also indicated that the teacher's comments had no effect on the dependent variables.