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Free Word Doc Programs vs Paid Alternatives: Which is Right for You?

When it comes to word processing software, there are plenty of options available in the market. While Microsoft Word has long been the go-to choice for many, there has been a rise in free word doc programs that offer similar functionality without the price tag. In this article, we will explore the differences between free word doc programs and paid alternatives to help you decide which option is right for you.

The Benefits of Free Word Doc Programs

One of the biggest advantages of using a free word doc program is obvious – it’s absolutely free. This can be a significant benefit for individuals or businesses on a tight budget. Free word doc programs often provide all the essential features you need for creating and editing documents, including formatting options, spell check, and even cloud storage.

Another advantage of free word doc programs is their compatibility with popular file formats such as .docx and .pdf. This means that you can easily collaborate with others who may be using different software without any compatibility issues. Additionally, many free programs also offer cross-platform functionality, allowing you to access your documents from various devices seamlessly.

Furthermore, some free word doc programs have a user-friendly interface that makes them easy to navigate and use. These programs are designed with simplicity in mind and can be great options for those who do not require advanced features or have limited experience with word processing software.

The Drawbacks of Free Word Doc Programs

While free word doc programs offer several benefits, they do come with certain limitations. One common drawback is the lack of advanced features found in paid alternatives like Microsoft Word. These features may include advanced formatting options, mail merge capabilities, or integration with other productivity tools.

Another limitation of using a free word doc program is the potential for limited customer support or documentation. Since these programs are often developed by smaller teams or communities, comprehensive customer support may not always be readily available. Additionally, the lack of regular updates and improvements can impact the overall performance and stability of the software.

It’s also worth noting that free word doc programs may display advertisements or require users to upgrade to a paid version for access to certain premium features. While these ads can be a minor inconvenience, they are often necessary to support the development and maintenance of the free software.

The Advantages of Paid Word Processing Software

Paid word processing software, such as Microsoft Word, offers several advantages over their free counterparts. One major benefit is access to advanced features and functionalities. These paid programs often come packed with a wide range of tools for creating professional documents, including templates, advanced formatting options, collaboration features, and more.

Another advantage of using paid alternatives is the availability of comprehensive customer support. Companies like Microsoft provide extensive documentation, forums, and dedicated support teams that can assist users with any issues or questions they may have. Regular updates and bug fixes are also common with paid software, ensuring that you have access to the latest features and security patches.

Paid word processing software also tends to offer better integration with other productivity tools such as spreadsheets or presentation software. This can be particularly beneficial for businesses that rely on seamless cross-functionality between different applications.

Making the Choice: Free vs Paid

Ultimately, whether you choose a free word doc program or a paid alternative depends on your specific needs and budget. If you require advanced features or comprehensive customer support for your work or business needs, investing in a paid word processing program may be worth it. On the other hand, if you have basic document editing requirements and want to save costs, opting for a free word doc program can be a viable choice.

Consider evaluating your needs in terms of functionality, usability, compatibility with other tools/software, customer support requirements, and budget constraints before making your decision. Regardless of which option you choose – free or paid – both have their own merits and can help you create professional-looking documents efficiently.

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

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Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

Instructors have many tasks to perform during the semester, including grading assignments and assessments. Feedback on performance is a critical factor in helping students improve and succeed. Grading rubrics can provide more consistent feedback for students and create efficiency for the instructor/grader.

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work, including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations. Rubrics are helpful for instructors because they can help them communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly and efficiently. Finally, rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Fall 2022)
• Workshop Registration

Step 1: Define the Purpose

The first step in the rubric-creation process is to define the purpose of the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the assignment?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks?  
• Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?  
• What are the learning objectives for the assignment?  
• What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment?
• What would an excellent assignment look like?
• How would you describe an acceptable assignment?  
• How would you describe an assignment that falls below expectations?
• What kind of feedback do you want to give students for their work?
• Do you want/need to give them a grade? If so, do you want to give them a single overall grade or detailed feedback based on a variety of criteria?
• Do you want to give students specific feedback that will help them improve their future work?

Step 2: Decide What Kind of Rubric You Will Use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric consists of a single scale with all the criteria to be included in the evaluation (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) being considered together. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score (usually on a 1-4 or 1-6 point scale) based on an overall judgment of the student’s work. The rater matches an entire piece of student work to a single description on the scale.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Place an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save time by minimizing the number of decisions to be made
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Do not provide specific feedback for improvement
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Criteria cannot be weighted

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic rubric resembles a grid with the criteria for an assignment listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row, often using numbers and/or descriptive tags. The cells within the center of the rubric may be left blank or may contain descriptions of what the specified criteria look like for each level of performance. When scoring with an analytic rubric, each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the rubrics are well defined
• May limit personalized feedback to help students improve

Single-Point Rubric . Similar to an analytic/descriptive rubric in that it breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria. The detailed performance descriptors are only for the level of proficiency. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• More likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments
• Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3: Define the Criteria

Ask yourself: What knowledge and skills are required for the assignment/assessment? Make a list of these, group and label them, and eliminate any that are not critical.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Review the learning objectives for the course; use the assignment prompt, existing grading checklists, peer response sheets, comments on previous work, past examples of student work, etc.
• Try describing A/B/C work.
• Consider “sentence starters” with verbs describing student performance from Bloom’s Taxonomy  or other terms to indicate various levels of performance, i.e., presence to absence, complete to incomplete, many to some to none, major to minor, consistent to inconsistent, always to usually to sometimes to rarely
• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider how you will weigh them in relation to each other

Step 4: Design the Rating Scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• Will you use numbers or descriptive labels for these levels?
• If you choose descriptive labels, what labels are most appropriate? Will you assign a number to those labels?
• In what order will you list these levels — from lowest to highest or vice versa?

Step 5: Write Descriptions for Each Level of the Rating Scale

Create statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric. For an analytic rubric, do this for each particular criterion of the rubric. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Start with the top/exemplary work category –what does it look like when a student has achieved excellence in each category? Then look at the “bottom” category –what does it look like when students have not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then add the categories in between.

Also, take into consideration that well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 6: Create your Rubric

• Develop the criteria, rating scale, and descriptions for each level of the rating scale into a rubric
• Include the assignment at the top of the rubric, space permitting  
• For reading and grading ease, limit the rubric to a single page, if possible
• Consider the effectiveness of your rubric and revise accordingly
• Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 7: Pilot-test your Rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher Assistants

Also, try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Use Parallel Language . Make sure that the language from column to column is similar and that syntax and wording correspond. Of course, the words will change for each section or assignment, as will the expectations, but in terms of readability, make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa. In addition, if you have an indicator described in one category, it will need to be described in the next category, whether it is about “having included” or “not having included” something. This is all about clarity and transparency to students.
• Use Student-Friendly Language . If students can’t understand the rubric, it will not be useful for guiding instruction, reflection, and assessment. If you want students to engage in using the rubric, they have to understand it. Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Use the Rubric with Your Students . You have to use the rubric with the students. It means nothing to them if you don’t. For students to find the rubric useful in terms of their learning, they must see a reason for using it. Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Don’t Use Too Many Columns . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.
• Common Rubrics and Templates are Awesome . Avoid rubric fatigue, as in creating rubrics to the point where you just can’t do it anymore. This can be done with common rubrics that students see across multiple classroom activities and through creating templates that you can alter slightly as needed. Design those templates for learning targets or similar performance tasks in your classroom. It’s easy to change these types of rubrics later. Figure out your common practices and create a single rubric your team can use.
• Rely on Descriptive Language. The most effective descriptions are those that use specific descriptions. This means avoiding words like “good” and “excellent.” At the same time, don’t rely on numbers, such as a number of resources, as your crutch. Instead of saying, “find excellent sources” or “use three sources,” focus your rubric language on the quality use of whatever sources students find and on the best possible way of aligning that data to the work. It isn’t about the number of sources, and “excellent” is too vague for students. Be specific and descriptive.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper, single-point rubric.

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Single Point Discussion Rubric
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Supplemental Tools with Rubrics in Moodle

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form
• DELTA – Rubrics: Making Assignments Easier for You and Your Students (2/1/2022)
• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics. Retrieved from http://resources.depaul.edu/teaching-commons/teaching-guides/feedback-grading/rubrics/Pages/default.aspx
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics. Cult of Pedagogy. Retrieved from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics/
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics. Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from    http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec96/vol54/num04/Understanding-Rubrics.aspx
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/designing-using-rubrics-andrew-miller
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1628-3_3

• Arts & Humanities

English 120 Writing Assignment Rubric.doc

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