A scoring rubric for performance assessment of information literacy in Dutch higher education

Abstract

The main purpose of the research was the development and testing of an assessment tool for the grading of Dutch students’ performance in information problem solving during their study tasks. Scholarly literature suggests that an analytical scoring rubric would be a good tool for this.Described in this article are the construction process of such a scoring rubric and the evaluation of the prototype based on the assessment of its usefulness in educational practice, the efficiency in use and the reliability of the rubric. To test this last point, the rubric was used by two professors when they graded the same set of student products. ‘Interrater reliability’ for the professors’ gradings was estimated by calculating absolute agreement of the scores, adjacent agreement and decision consistency. An English version of the scoring rubric has been added to this journal article as an appendix. This rubric can be used in various discipline-based courses in Higher Education in which information problem solving is one of the learning activities. After evaluating the prototype it was concluded that the rubric is particularly useful to graders as it keeps them focussed on relevant aspects during the grading process. If the rubric is used for summative evaluation of credit bearing student work, it is strongly recommended to use the scoring scheme as a whole and to let the grading work be done by at least two different markers.