As Dr Cope mentioned in this discussion of assessment, more meaningful feedback to students comes in the form of formative assessment as it is a guide to the future (what a student needs to do differently now in order to success). This is opposed to summative assessment which simply tells a student what she/he should have done differently, but its too late now because that grade is going into the report card...

Dr Cope touched briefly on the idea of assessing using a rubric as one way of creating meaningful feedback for students because it can give information on knowledge attainment but more importantly on understanding and on processes. In this sense, a rubric would not state something such as "can name 5 causes of WWI" for the top grade; "can name 4 causes of WWI" for the next highest level and so on. Instead, a rubric would focus on the student's ability to explain the causes of WWI if a traditional test is used to assess learning.

What interests me is the way in which rubrics can be used to "assess" practice in the way described by Dr Cope in relation to a student's volcanoe project. If we decide to get students to create these kind of knowledge articifacts, then our rubrics must reflect this - and not all rubrics will do this. Therefore, attention needs to directed towards the rubrics themselves so that they reflect the goals of "knowledge making".