Assessment of Interdisciplinary Writing - Blog Post 3

Mansilla, Veronica Boix, Elizabeth Dawes Duraisingh, Christopher R. Wolfe, Carolyn Haynes. “Targeted Assessment Rubric: An Empirically Grounded Rubric for Interdisciplinary Writing.” The Journal of Higher Education 80.3 (2009): 334-353. Print.

Numerous American colleges and universities recognize and address the current need to educate students in interdisciplinary research.  The number of interdisciplinary courses offered is increasing, yet the methods behind structuring and assessing these courses remain uncertain.  Mansilla et al. argue that too many programs use student grades and opinion surveys to assess the success of a course and learning outcomes.  These methods bypass specific characteristics that define interdisciplinary achievement.  Therefore, Mansilla et al. propose a new form of assessment, the Targeted Assessment Rubric for Interdisciplinary Writing, that addresses a paper’s purposefulness, disciplinary grounding, integration, and critical awareness.

Mansilla et al. first chose to use a rubric due to increased consistency in grading as all assessment criteria at varying levels of performance were clear between students and professors.  In addition, a rubric allowed students to judge their own work and understand areas of improvement.  The rubric was then built around the concept of interdisciplinary understanding, or the “capacity to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking in two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to produce a cognitive advancement” (Mansilla et al. 337).  Four categories of assessment were developed including an understanding of disciplinary foundations and insights, the effectiveness of integrating these insights into a new model, a critical awareness and articulation of the advantages produced by the integration, and a clear understanding of the purpose behind the paper and inquiry.  The rubric was then broken down and described by levels of performance, including naïve, novice, apprentice, and master.

Mansilla et al. demonstrated the efficacy and reliability of the rubric by sampling 84 student essays.  A total of 64 essays were collected from students in Interdisciplinary Studies at the freshman, sophomore, and senior levels with an additional 20 essays collected from seniors outside of the department. Reliability was tested by randomly sampling and individually assessing 40 essays.  Collaborative assessment was performed upon discrepancy and following adjustment of the rubric, individual assessment was repeated for the remaining 44 essays.  The Inter Rater Reliability of scoring was 83.5%.  Mansilla et al. also demonstrated rubric validity, statistically showing increased ability in all seniors over underclassmen and in interdisciplinary seniors over those from different departments.  These results suggest that this rubric is a reliable tool to evaluate undergraduate writing covering diverse topics and is valid for determining developmental changes in student essays over time. 

Mansilla et al. effectively describe and support the theoretical basis and empirical testing of their innovative rubric.  Professors seeking improved assessment strategies for interdisciplinary writing will find this paper useful as it provides suggestions and examples, enabling the reader to directly apply or adapt the rubric to the classroom.  The authors provide a critical review of the rubric, however the reader should do further research on the pros and cons of additional assessment strategies before deciding to use this one.