Paper
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
614
Clinical Grading Rubrics: Taking the Guesswork Out of Clinical Grades
Mary T. Parsons, MS, CRNP and William T. Campbell, EdD, MS, RN. Department of Nursing, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD, USA
| Learning Objective #1: State two advantages for students evaluated with grading rubrics in clinical nursing courses. |
| Learning Objective #2: State two advantages for faculty members using grading rubrics in clinical nursing courses. |
The Pediatric clinical courses at Salisbury University incorporate a variety of clinical assignments with varied learner outcomes. The clinical settings vary, and include local hospitals, day care centers, the PICU at the University of Maryland, local school settings, pediatricians’offices, and the Nursing Skills Lab. Because of the great variety and differences in each clinical assignment, and because there has been some departmental concerns about clinical grade inflation, there was a need to customize the clinical evaluation tools for each assignment. Additionally, there was a need for the evaluation tool to assist faculty in differentiating between “A, B & C” students. Rubistar.com is a wonderful web site with tools to help faculty create evaluation rubrics for many various types of learning activities. This site was utilized to identify many of the learner outcomes we desired. These outcomes were then incorporated into the evaluation rubrics with revisions and modifications to meet the needs of each clinical assignment. The evaluation rubrics were piloted with our Senior level nursing students in the fall of 2006, and proved to be very effective. They provided specific behavioral expectations for the students, and grading criteria were directly related to these expectations. The rubrics eliminated the grading miscommunication potential, and both students and faculty members were clear about the status of clinical grades throughout the semester. The grading rubrics have been an asset to our clinical team, and will continue to be used for students’ clinical evaluations.