In designing our collaboration rubric, we drew a distinction between individual and group behaviors. While both are important for successful collaboration, distinguishing between the two provides useful guidance for how to support and assess student progress.
The Individual Collaboration Rubric focuses on specific aspects of individual collaboration. The indicators are designed to be simple and accessible to students using the Peer Evaluation Tool as well as instructive to guide group conversations. The number of dimensions (rows) for this rubric makes it unlikely a teacher would use it in its entirety. A teacher might opt to focus on particular rows by project or a school might focus on particular indicators in particular grade levels. Schools may also find opportunities to bring additional collaboration and project management skills to extend this outcome as their students grow as collaborators and we encourage you to do so.
Middle School Note: The indicators in the collaboration rubric are intended to be broadly applicable and student- friendly. While there are similar, sometimes identical, indicators for middle school and high school, the assumption is as students progress projects become more complex and scaffolding is progressively removed. Twelfth graders ought to be engaged in collaboration about far more complex issues with far less scaffolding than 6th graders, though the language used to describe that might be similar.
Individual Collaboration – Middle School
Collaboration involves behaviors under the control of individual group members including effort they put into group tasks, their manner of interacting with others in the group, and the quantity and quality of contributions they make to group discussions.