The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board describes Personal Responsibility to include “the ability to connect choices, actions and consequences to ethical decision-making.”
Framing Language
This rubric is designed to assess the Core Objective (Personal Responsibility) as described by the THECB in the Texas Core Curriculum. In past attempts to assess Personal Responsibility, different faculty have focused on factors ranging from understanding and avoiding plagiarism to being on time for class. When the THECB defined the new core objectives, the DCCCD decided to use the five VALUE rubrics created by the AAC&U for the assessment of Personal and Social Responsibility. These rubrics were determined to be ineffective for assessing Personal and Social Responsibility as they are defined by the THECB. A team of representatives from each of the Colleges of the DCCCD met several times over the summer of 2016 to develop two new rubrics for assessing these two objectives in the next cycle of assessment.

The focus of our discussions were centered on the definition of Personal Responsibility as described by the THECB. We also researched other colleges around the country with varying results. Ultimately, we wanted to create a rubric that would assess a student’s ability to work through an ethical decision making process. The ideal assignment will be a written essay that is long enough to address all three criteria. This rubric was created to fit well in a signature assignment that assesses more than one core objective simultaneously.

Glossary – the definitions that follow were developed to clarify terms and concepts used in this rubric only.
• Understanding Ethical Choices – The student is able to thoroughly discuss at least two sides of an ethical choice to be made.
• Decision-Making – The student is able to state a position on the issue with more detailed explanation and/or reasons for the position and addresses objections to their position.
• Consequences – The student is able to identify consequences and demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the scope, complexity and/or magnitude of the consequences.