Dear College Colleague,

This is just a friendly reminder to please complete the competency-specific online rubric regarding students’ Core Educational Competency In Reading Things In Books And Writing About Them. It is important, and you have totally not done it yet.

We refer to this rubric as Project 3.5.1, which you will recognize as a series of numbers. By entering data about your courses into this rubric, you help us to improve education for all our students, to whom we have also assigned numbers. We have also assigned you a number based on an Enigma-encrypted combination of the street address of your childhood home and your ATM PIN code, which we hacked (please see attachment 7).

This is the first time that the college has embarked on such a robust process for measuring Core Educational Competency In Reading Things In Books And Writing About Them, and we really can’t do it without your mandated participation. We have devised this rubric in consultation with the Office of Institutional Research About the Institution, which tirelessly gathers data and then enters it into spreadsheets. Please see their Statement of Very Worthy Goals in attachment 6.

The Core Educational Competency In Reading Things In Books and Writing About Them requires that students demonstrate “critical thinking” and “critical reading” skills, but please note that this kind of cleverness should only be encouraged with regards to literary books. Aspects of life to which “critical thinking” and “critical reading” skills should not be applied are outlined in attachment 5, addendum 4.8.9.70.

As we have outlined in several emails, our rubric determines whether students have achieved Fundamental Competencies, Higher Order Competencies, or Really Highest Order Competencies. Those with Really Highest Order Competencies will be given a red velvet cloak and a crown. Attachment 4 outlines the career possibilities for those who achieve Really Highest Order Competencies (Google!), and we encourage you to share this information with your students by way of motivation.

You are asked to fill out one rubric per student, but if you start having a really great time, please feel free to fill out several rubrics per student, but remember to save each one with a clear file name like “Student 24601_Communication_Shakespeare_Final Exam_Spring 2015_Part 1 of 12_Subsection 2.”

We would also like to request that you fill out a Rubric For The Rubric (attachment 4A), which will help us to determine how effectively we communicated the goals of our initial rubric (see attachment 4B for this rubric). Maybe have a glass of wine before you open either of these attachments.

This exercise can be confusing because it is so important. We hope that you signed up for one of our three-hour training sessions earlier this semester, where we provided you with a binder filled with forms. If you weren’t able to attend a training session, it is too late now. Please send us a succinct email to this effect and then drown yourself in a bathtub of lukewarm water.

We’re thrilled to be gathering data about how effectively we gather data, and we look forward to seeing how education improves as a result. For our theories about the relationship between rubrics and the realities of your classroom experience, please see attachments 1, 2, and 3. Attachment 1 looks not unlike attachment 2, which has the same format as attachment 3.

Thank you again for your participation in the process of transforming the irritatingly intangible benefits of your English course into a bubble form.

Sincerely,
The Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant to the Dean of Something or Other