[SCA-AE] FW: Rubrics goasls & call for volunteers

[Thomas Ireland-Delfs]

Thorpe wrote:

>Are rubrics really applicable to all of these categories?

I think they can be, if they are written well enough.  They will by
necessity be more general than specific.  But they can be written.

> Having looked at the rubrics many times I still feel that there are
many categories to which they would be inappropriate. 

Which ones?  and why?

>Having taught professionally, I can see how they would appeal to an
educator with a number of very similar items to grade, and
administrators to answer to for any perceived 
unfairness/bias in grading. 

You don't get my reason for liking rubrics.  First, they provide both
the judge & the entrant something on which to hang their hats.  Second,
they are an educational tool, not a judging tool.  I do not particularly
care about who wins the Pent or each category.  I want to see more
growth in the arts in AEthelmearc.   This is far superior to what you
get when you have the current system.  Is it perfect?  I hope not.
Anything needs improvement.  By the way, I spent 33 years as a teacher &
came upon rubrics during the course of my teaching career.  I decided to
try them in the SCA because they allow for measurement, for a framework
to judge complex performances, such as jewelry, clothing, baking, etc.

>I understand that the idea is that there should be some sort of
standard that one can plug in a series of observations to and come out
with a score that should be somewhat consistent from judge to judge, but
using the category I know best, I cannot figure out how to take the
manifold types of jewelry work alone practiced in the hundreds of
cultures that existed in the known world in the thousand year period we
study and reduce the evaluations to a simplified if-then grid.  I think
the answer is not more rubrics, I think the answer is more well educated
judges.

I'd start by looking at the cultures we most often work with.  There
certainly are certain cultures & times that get more attention than
others, you must admit.  However, no matter how many different cultures
we need to deal with, there are qualities that set expert jewelry making
apart from average or below-average    It is those that we need to look
for & describe for a rubric.  Beyond those, it does indeed depend on the
well-educated judge to discern the authenticity & skill-level of the
entries we have.  Certainly, the combination of the two: well-written
rubrics (or frameworks, if you prefer) and well-educated judges can make
for a higher level of attainment, if artisans use them properly.


>Something simple, a single product that follows well established
conventions, like knives, might be applicable to rubrics, although that
still limits the inclusion of subtle characteristics in the evaluation.
In the 5 years I judged photography for 4-H, including 2 years as the
only photography judge at the state fair, I came up with an evaluation
sheet that is being used now statewide that had a similar goal to a
rubric, to try to establish a uniform framework in which to evaluate an
art object. The difference is that it listed categories of evaluation, 
rather than definitions of what a given level in a category was. I think
an evaluation sheet with categories is all the guidance an educated
evaluator needs.

Well, I think we have a place to begin.  Such a framework, if
well-written, becomes a rubric.  There has to be "wiggle room" within
any judging system, a space that a judge's knowledge fills.  The
difficulty we so often have is a lack of such skilled judges at Ice
Dragon.  To a certain extent, the rubrics attempt to fill that lack of
knowledge.  I know that they aren't perfect.  But I've yet to see a
better option being prepared.

>Thorpe

Thanks for your thoughts,

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