The Assessment Evaluation Rubric: Promoting Learning and Learner-Centered Teaching through Assessment in Face-to-Face or Distanced Higher Education
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I have uploaded my running comments in the document. As an overall summary the following items would need to be addressed.
- The organization is extremely confusing. There is a lack of organization that moves the ideas coherent forward, and there are no writing structural supports that would help a reader to understand where the manuscript is going.
- There is a lack of clear and consistent definitions of summative and formative assessment. In the first section, these terms come up multiple times but have differing explanations attached to them. In most cases each time they arise a subtly different dimension is being discussed, but they way it is presented, it makes the definitions seems like a moving target.
- A clear and coherent section that elaborates what is considered best practices in assessment is higher education is needed. This needs to be addressed separately from the details of the rubric.
- Many sentences are long, with multiple clauses which make them difficult to read and understand.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Author Response
please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a very interesting paper indeed. This is a very important and timely subject and it is a potentially significant contribution to the current research on the topic of assessment in higher education. The manuscript is well structured and the references are sound, even if a few of the references are rather old. The focus of the manuscript and the objective of the research are clear already from the abstract. However, there are a few issues that need attention, none of them serious:
One of the keywords is validity, however it or its’ synonyms are not mentioned in the abstract, nor in the title. Does it perhaps refer to “guide the development”, but the wording has changed in the writing process?
The introduction is focused and without too much background information, to the point telling what this research is about. Very good. Please, modify the sentence “The decisions that affect…” because it is 6 lines long with additional information in brackets. By making 2 sentences the information is easier to read. Please, modify the sentence “As instructors in higher education…”, as there is a verb missing between the words “they” and “from”. Also, have a look at the sentence “From the perspective of students in higher…” what does “other” refer to? There are several other grammatical mistakes, therefore the authors could improve the manuscript by language proofing it before publication. Please, also check the font and the font size of the sections (as well as the four dimensions) so the reader knows if the text belongs to a subsection or not. Considering the 4 dimensions mentioned in the “Introduction”, how did you decide on these four and their authors?
The last paragraph (with some modifications) before “Dimension 1” in section 2 that starts “This four-dimensional rubic…” would fit very well at the very beginning of the section 2. This would clarify the reader from the beginning why the following information is important.
Dimension 1 starts with a list of four items, what do they represent? Are these linked to the four questions mentioned before? An introduction to these items is needed, as there are three questions by Messick later on and they might confuse the reader. Introduction is needed for Dimension 2, 3 and 4 as well to clarify if the items on the lists are linked to the questions. Messick’s three questions seem to be important in Dimension 1, 3 and 4, should this perhaps be explained in the text before Dimension 1?
The “Discussion” section seems to start with the instructions of the journal. The text itself is in the “Discussion” is well structured and expresses the possibilities that AER has. This section could be improved by discussion of how or why AER might impact the field of education and assessment practices.
Author Response
please see attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
It is unclear the novelty/usefulness of this paper compared to the existing literaturen or that it shows that AER really promotes learner-centered teaching
Difficult to read cause of too long sentences.
There is no mention to competence based learning, cf.
Edwards M, Sánchez-Ruiz LM, Sánchez-Díaz C. (2009). Achieving competence-based curriculum in engineering education in Spain, Proceedings of the IEEE 97 (10), 1727-1736
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The revisions are well done and have made the purpose and use of the AER clear.
Author Response
No additional comments were made made.
Reviewer 3 Report
Paper looks more like a guide on "How to build up a Rubric" than a researh paper. The added value of the paper should be made clearer,
Dimension x (with x=1,2,3,4) must always be written with capital "D".
Some citing becomes lengthy when ideas of other researchers are recalled, sometimes with repeatition of the source after a few lines. When this happens, the corresponding paragraph/expression has been highlighted. All highlighted writing should be revised.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
I respectfully disagree that the paper is about how to create a rubric. The value that is added by this paper to the literature is in its synthesis of the multitude of references that most university instructors would never have occasion to read. The creation of a four-dimensional rubric that can be used by the individual for themselves, or by teams/for others, is completely novel -particularly since it is wholly based on the education sciences.
Beyond this, the suggestion that "dimension" is always capitalized has been taken. The highlighted text has been revised, but only in a minor way. Readers should recognize that many individuals contributed to the ideas that are implemented in the AER. The dimensions were not created by any one individual or team but arise from across all higher education/learning sciences research to date.
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
The answer provided by the author
"The value that is added by this paper to the literature is in its synthesis of the multitude of references that most university instructors would never have occasion to read. The creation of a four-dimensional rubric that can be used by the individual for themselves, or by teams/for others, is completely novel"
explains the goal of the paper. It should appear in the text.
The first paragraph of Conclusion needs formatting.
There is some "(v)alidation" in Line 533 where parenthesis are unnecessary.
Author Response
Responses to reviewer, R3
"The value that is added by this paper to the literature is in its synthesis of the multitude of references that most university instructors would never have occasion to read. The creation of a four-dimensional rubric that can be used by the individual for themselves, or by teams/for others, is completely novel"
explains the goal of the paper. It should appear in the text.
This has been incorporated, now in lines 149-153.
The first paragraph of Conclusion needs formatting. There is some "(v)alidation" in Line 533 where parenthesis are unnecessary.
The parenthesis are necessary because the sentence I have cited starts with a capital V (“Validation…), but as it appears in the middle of the sentence, it can’t be shown as a capital v. The parenthesis indicate that, apart from capitalization, it's a direct quote.
