I use a rubric in assessing my students work, set out in tabular form: each row is one of the criteria from the learning outcomes, while the columns indicated degree of mastery, with stronger performance on the left.
When a student comes to see me about an assignment, usually concerned about the final grade – GPA rules all! – I immediately turn to the rubric and discuss specific ways they can improve their performance on the assignment.
Talking to one student, this semester just past, I said, “My goal is to get everyone to move to the left.”
I was taken aback when the student asked, in reply, “My left or yours?”
Beat.
“We’re on the same side, looking at it the same way,” I replied.
After a moment’s silence, the student said, in wonder, “I’ve never heard a professor say that before.”
It makes me wonder what my colleagues are doing in their own classes, or what students think we are doing, that it never occurred to this particular student that an instructor could be on the same side, with the same goals.
It makes me wonder how many of my colleagues, and how many of my students, think of education instead as an adversarial process?
What can we do to tear down that wall?
Ethics Afield 