{"id":10053,"date":"2026-06-08T08:00:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T13:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/?p=10053"},"modified":"2026-06-08T10:37:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T15:37:35","slug":"using-a-student-success-rubric-to-strengthen-course-design-and-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/es\/blog\/using-a-student-success-rubric-to-strengthen-course-design-and-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Using a Student Success Rubric to Strengthen Course Design and Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many academic programs have as a stated objective ensuring every student is included in the learning experience, but it\u2019s not always obvious how to measure that goal. This gap was identified by Valerie Bloom, an instructional designer at the International Institute for Restorative Practices<\/a> (IIRP) as she read through its new strategic plan in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cA goal said we should \u2018embed diversity into the curriculum,\u2019\u201d says Bloom. \u201cI thought, \u2018Well, how will we know if we\u2019ve actually done that?\u2019 When we go into reaccreditation [with The Middle States Commission on Higher Education], we\u2019ll have to demonstrate that we met that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irrespective of accreditation requirements, diversity is particularly important for IIRP, a graduate school that specializes in degrees in the field of restorative practices<\/a> in education and other community settings. Restorative practices strengthen relationships between individuals, improve social connections, and bridge gaps across divided groups. A premise of restorative practices is that humans are happier, healthier, and more productive when others do things with them, rather than to them or for them.<\/p>\n

Including every learner, therefore, is in the DNA of IIRP\u2019s academic programs, but the institute didn\u2019t have a plan to assess that, so Bloom proposed to her provost the idea of a rubric to measure the diversity objective in the strategic plan. After two years of development, Bloom and her colleagues created the Course Design for Student Success Rubric. The rubric seeks to empower teaching-focused faculty and their departments to collaborate for greater student success by fostering student engagement, inclusivity, access, and success in the classroom.<\/p>\n

Now the IIRP is collaborating with Every Learner Everywhere to make the Course Design for Student Success Rubric<\/a> available to other colleges and universities, along with a companion resource on continuous improvement.<\/p>\n

Developing the rubric for student success<\/h2>\n

Bloom\u2019s first step when she began working on the rubric was to search for other examples that measured inclusivity in course design, but none quite fit the needs of the IIRP, and some were counterproductive. For example, Bloom wanted a way faculty and departments could assess building a foundation of trust and honesty in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne [rubric had] a box you could check if you ask every student their name and pronouns,\u201d she says. \u201cTo me, that sounded awful if you haven\u2019t done the groundwork to make it safe for someone to share that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After pulling together the most relevant parts of all the rubrics she found in her research, she called in three colleagues \u201cwho live and breathe this work\u201d to move her draft forward. That group spent six months working carefully on each cell of the rubric. \u201cWe\u2019d run out of time, take a break, and come back to it in the next meeting,\u201d Bloom says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to check boxes. We needed to know that when the user marked something as \u2018meeting expectations,\u2019 it truly meant something. We wanted a solid, robust rubric people could be proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the rubric supports inclusive teaching<\/h2>\n

Like other rubrics, the columns of the Course Design for Student Success Rubric lay out a scale with levels of achievement. In this case, they are: not started, approaching expectations, meeting expectations, and exceeding expectations.<\/p>\n

The rows of the rubric lay out 20 standards related to support, costs, accessibility, opportunities for students to provide feedback, learner-to-learner relationships, representation, bias, and more.
\n\"Student
\nOne of those standards is faculty positionality, an understanding of how an instructor\u2019s background affects their work in the classroom. Bloom and her colleagues began discussing this with a question: What practices do we actually mean when we say the faculty member is inviting people\u2019s entire identity into the classroom?<\/p>\n

Rather than a one-sided demand that students share information such as their cultural background, Bloom and her colleagues felt that exchange should start with the instructor. The natural place to begin, she says, is with a positionality statement on the syllabus: a brief statement outlining an educator’s social, cultural, and political identities and how these factors influence their work in the classroom.<\/p>\n

At the time the rubric was being developed, most educators at the IIRP already included a positionality statement in their syllabi, but the team wanted to codify the elements of a strong and welcoming positionality statement. For example:<\/p>\n