Welcome to Gaia! ::

The problem stems from the fact that you don't understand the purpose of a rubric. It's fine, because it seems like most people don't, so that makes you normal at best.

Do you want to know how we grade students on their ability to capture the attention of their audience? We're not grading them on how insightful their argument may be, we're grading them on their ability to apply the techniques that they were taught in the class in an assignment. That simple. Do you know what else do we grade them in regards to this? Do they support their argument with evidence? Again, this also has huge part to do with a logical structure that they were taught in class. We don't grade if we like their topic. We grade if they support their argument.

But that's from a social studies point of view. It's no different from any other academic essay format though. They learn how to write persuasive essays in English.

Good writers write in a way that can be understood easily. It doesn't matter what kind of imagination you have, if you can't convey what you write in a meaningful way then all your ideas will fall on deaf ears. We don't teach brilliance or creativity in school, we teach how to communicate with a large audience, and that's what you're graded on.

But I'll keep letting the bum not doing s**t with his life throw pot shots at the person who's amounted to something other than an internet troll.

In real life, you're not graded on a rubric. People might have an idea of what they're looking for in their head, but it's usually not a well-defined rubric. So saying that you're graded on entertainment value in real life is well, meaningless in this argument. One, you're not, you're still graded on how well you can communicate with people. This is why there's so much time spent on the mechanical aspects of writing.

It's one thing to have great ideas and another thing to be a great writer. If you're getting poor marks because of poor writing then it means you're lacking something important. Again, ideas don't mean anything on their own.

Accepting that it's a biased tournament, when it's using a tool that has the sole purpose of eliminating bias, is stupid. The fact that you accept such things because of whatever pessimistic attitude you have is why the whole tournament scene has been in a state of decline. People would rather not fix the problem and instead get stressed out by the problems it cause, quit because it gets hard, and the whole thing goes to s**t.

Sorry that I know that it can be done a better way. The right way. You can think of me as full of myself, but if you don't think there's anything wrong with how this s**t has been going on for at least 3 years now, the there's no hope for you.

Again, the point of having a rubric is to eliminate subjectivity. A good rubric simplifies the grading process. It's a tool. The way the rubric is used now is like trying to use a hammer as a saw.

I have ever right to complain because I've offered to volunteer my time to help better this project, and what happens? People, year after year, want to ignore it because of whatever issues with pride they have. See, it's fine that Tres doesn't like the idea of objectivity and using a rubric at all. But it's asinine to not use a tool the way it's meant to be used.

And it's not that you don't have people telling you how to use it. You do, you just refuse to listen.

tl;dr

KB, get on my level.

Hmmmm


This is a good arguement.

Too bad the maturity level isn't high enough to have it without it getting out of hand.


Feelers and whatnot.

Edit: just proved my point

You're not making any sense. You're saying there's an existing unbiased system for determining things as varied as writing. There isn't. There's a series of guidelines that educators use to determine and dispense grades.

If there were such a system, no human being could have invented it. Since we aren't being handed our educational system from aliens I think its safe to say there's a decent amount of bias in there. That's why you can get two different marks from two different teachers on one paper. That's not even debatable, that's just a fact.

You might go "oh well Timmy here colored within the lines, except that one little smidge where the pen went off, so 90/100" and a*****e crabby pants might go "completely unacceptable, this color outside the line ruins the image, 60/100".



People are expected to be able to write something entertaining, understandable, and intuitive. That's it. There's nothing complicated about it to misunderstand. Was your writing entertaining to the judges? Yes/No. It's like you're in American Idol, because guess what, this is a competition with judges. Your success or failure is just as much about wowing the judges as it is your raw skill. Was your writing understandable? Yes/No. Was your writing intuitive? Yes/No.

Know your skill, know your judges, and you will succeed. You can be really good and not appeal to the judges and you will lose. That's true for basically everything in life. That's why geniuses, literal geniuses, have dropped out of school and other institutions - they paved their own way because they weren't conforming adequately to the biased expectations of people running those places.

A Rubric is supposed to be unbiased because when you use it, you are grading things based on set expectations that are black and white.

For example, when I was doing wood working for a company down in Indianapolis we had a rubric for counter tops rolling out of the Corian department.

Each counter was looked over and was graded based on quality of materials, workmanship, etc. If it fell under a 40 then it was sent back for reworking.

Since we used a clear and precise rubric, those in the department knew

A) What they needed to do to get a score greater than 40 to be acceptable (it was out of 50)

B) We could hand the rubric to anyone, including an accountant who could not tell the difference between laminate/Corian brands and they could still get almost the exact same score as a seasoned carpenter.

If you have an issue with bias leaking in when using a rubric then the rubric is wrong, and needs redone.

BUT HEY IN OTHER NEWS this vacation is pretty sweet, not having to go to work at 5 AM is baller.

I actually don't see the need for a rubric outside it giving you an insight of what the judges want from you based on your performance.

Has a grading system to determine a winner, it is flawed.

We're all humans here.. So there'll always be bias, whether your accept it or deny it.

Cause it's... perfectly normal.

edit: So, like, I dunno exactly -what- are you guys tryin to avoid here

I've given examples of rubrics and offered to help revise them more than once.