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Rubrics

Written by Tom Laughner

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Design Effective Learning ExperiencesResources

First Published:
April 22, 2024

 

Rubrics are an assessment tool that guide grading by articulating specific components of assignments and communicating expectations for those components. Rubrics lend themselves to assessments where it is important to communicate high expectations, provide targeted feedback, and demonstrate learning priorities. When provided to students and used for assessment, rubrics purposefully communicate your expectations and priorities.

  
Use the comments section below to let us know your ideas about rubrics.

Rubrics:

“Students claim that using rubrics helps them to focus their efforts, produce work of higher quality, earn better grades and feel less anxious about assignments.” (Jonsson, 2014, p. 841)

“Rubrics allow faculty to communicate specific goals and intentions… making the evaluation of students more objective by using a standardized approach.” (Shipman, Roa, Hooten, & Wang, 2012)

When designing rubrics, make sure to include the four essential rubric elements:

  • Evaluation Criteria (What you will be assessing. For example, if you are constructing a rubric for a paper, your criteria might include quality of arguments, grammar, length, word count, or proper citations. Criteria make up the first row or column of a rubric.)
  • Performance Standards (The scores that may be earned for each criterion of the rubric. Like evaluation criteria, standards make up the first row or column of a rubric.)
  • Weight/Emphasis (An articulation of which evaluation criteria are most important for the assignment.)
  • Descriptors (Rich, descriptive language explaining the expectations for each performance standard for a given evaluation criteria. Descriptors are provided at the intersection of evaluation criteria and standards.)

Additionally, you should introduce rubrics to your students, explaining the aspects to be assessed in the rubric one by one to students. Exemplars or examples of student work that exemplifying the different standards in the rubric should be provided. Students should be tasked, under your guidance, with using the rubric to assess the performance of peers or exemplars to gain familiarity with the rubric. Lastly, “making rubrics accessible through explanations, timing and obtainability, as well as aligning the criteria closely with the assignments, may facilitate students’ understanding and use of the rubrics.” (Jonsson, 2014, p. 851)

Below is an example of a rubric for a reflection paper that includes all four rubric elements.

  Reflective Practitioner (100%) Aware Practitioner (80%) Reflective Novice (60%) Emerging (40%)
Clarity (20%) The language is clear and expressive. The reader can create a mental picture of the situation being described. Abstract concepts are explained accurately. Explanation of concepts makes sense to an uninformed reader. Minor, infrequent lapses in clarity and accuracy. There are frequent lapses in clarity and accuracy. Language is unclear and confusing. Concepts are either not discussed or are presented inaccurately.
Relevance (20%) The learning experience being reflected upon is demonstrated to be relevant and meaningful to participant and medallion learning goals. The learning experience being reflected upon is mostly demonstrated to be relevant and meaningful to participant and course learning goals. Attempts are made to demonstrate relevance of the learning experience, but the relevance is unclear to the reader. The reflection does little to demonstrate the relevance of the learning experience to student and/or course learning.
Analysis (30%) The reflection moves beyond simple description of the experience to an analysis of how the experience contributed to an understanding of self, others, and/or course concepts. The reflection demonstrates frequent participant attempts to analyze the experience but analysis lacks depth. Participant attempts to apply the learning experience to understanding of self, others,  or course concepts but fails to demonstrate depth of analysis. Reflection does not move beyond description of the learning experience(s).
Interconnections (20%) The reflection demonstrates connections between the experience and material from other medallions; past experience; and/or personal goals. The reflection often demonstrates connections between the experience and material from other medallions. There are infrequent attempts to demonstrate connections between the learning experience and material from other medallions. There is little attempt to demonstrate connections to previous medallions, learnings, or experiences.
Self-Criticism (10%)

The reflection demonstrates ability of the participant to question their own biases, stereotypes, preconceptions, and/or assumptions and define new modes of thinking as a result.

 The reflection demonstrates ability of the participant to question their own biases, stereotypes, preconceptions. There is some attempt at self-criticism, but the self-reflection fails to demonstrate a new awareness of personal biases, etc. Very little attempt at self-criticism.