Rubrics Overview

What’s the most effective feedback you’ve ever received? What made it so effective?

What is a rubric?
A rubric is a tool for measuring whether or not the objectives of a unit or performance have been met. Rubrics help to make the objective clear and to show the students what the goals are.
Using rubrics requires that you clearly define the expectations of your unit/performance. When you decide on the objectives of your unit/performance, you have to decide what it will look like when those objectives are met.
Rubrics--Short Version--P. Gow

Why Use Rubrics?
They are great tools for assessing student performances.
Developing rubrics with students helps to tell you who understands the expectations and who doesn’t.
Rubrics explain to students why they earned the grades they earned. Rubrics provide give specific feedback, and you will spend less time writing comments on papers.

Even more good reasons
Rubrics help hold the teacher accountable for the grades given to the performances done by the students—teachers become more consistent and more objective when they use rubrics.
When rubrics are developed as a class and distributed ahead of time, students have a better sense of the purpose of an assignment and what is expected of their work. Then the student can make choices about what s/he still needs to work on to meet the objectives.

HOW TO MAKE A RUBRIC THE PROCESS: IDEA TO ASSESSMENT

Start with the Big Idea
Define your vision of the unit and the performance—use one of the Unit Design templates
Make sure you clarify for yourself what you want the students to know, be able to do, and understand.
THEN

Describe the Process
Delineate how you expect the student to get there.
Develop the trajectory of work and the trajectory of assessment.
Describe for yourself what the tasks will be and what good work on them will look like
THEN

Determine the Key Elements
Determine the criteria that will be used to measure the quality of the performance.
Determine what parts of the performance will be evaluated, and how much weight will be given to each.
THEN

Design the Rubric
Create the rubric from the criteria you have established
Make sure that the CRITERIA are clear
Make sure that the categories for evaluation are clear
THEN

Use the Rubric
Evaluate student work using the tool you have designed.
(You should find yourself focusing on the important stuff and generating feedback for students that focuses on the big idea and your learning goals.)
If you must, generate a “grade.”

TYPES OF RUBRICS

Numeric/evaluative-scale rubrics
scales are generally numbered somewhere between 0 and 5,
categories can be weighted according to importance to the unit objectives.
“ Rubric gurus” recommend having an even number of ratings on your scale so you aren’t tempted to circle the middle all the time. It is important that the students understand what each rating means—what does a “5” look like? Explain it on every rubric!

Qualitative-scale rubrics
use words instead of numbers to describe the ratings. For example, by proficiency (“expert/ consistent/ emerging/ novice”) or frequency of performance (“always/ often/ sometimes/ rarely”)
The Whitten Method: use symbols (e.g., #,@,&,*) that correspond to descriptors decoded at the bottom of the rubric
Regardless of the terms used, it is important that the students understand not only the definitions of the terms, but also what you mean when you describe their work in the terms that are used.

Descriptive rubrics
time-consuming to create
specifically describes what each category looks like. It can:
specify numbers of errors permitted or level of accuracy expected (e.g. spelling, computation, etc.)
describe what each level of performance looks like (“colorful, clear, and creative” vs. “clear and straightforward”)
describe the degree to which a skill is performed (“analyzes” vs. “describes” vs. “states”)
most helpful for students to see what was expected
most helpful for students to make choices about how to budget their time and energy

Rubrics -> Grades
The “Rubric gurus” will tell you that you should not use rubrics for direct correspondence to grades.
Here in the USA, Planet Earth, we know that rubrics are extremely effective for giving students specific feedback about their learning based on their performances,
but that ultimately, we are asked to give that feedback via letter grades.

Rubrics -> Grades: General thoughts
Select a performance level that is “satisfactory”—all basic standards are met
Make this level the equivalent to your own “meets all standards” grade: ≈80, or C+/B-
(yes, there seems to be some inflation in this)
Higher-level performance than this should be truly exceptional, excellent, or surprising in quality relative to the criteria
Lower-level performance will be deficient in some regard relative to the criteria

ANY QUESTIONS?

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Rubrics Overview

by Peter Gow

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