A rubric is a scoring guide used to evaluate assignments based on evaluative criteria, quality definitions, and a scoring strategy. While rubrics provide consistent standards and make marking efficient, they also involve subjective human judgment. Rubrics can justify bad marks if students fail criteria and may not be read closely by students. Best practices include making rubrics focus on learning over grading, allowing flexibility, and having students help construct rubrics to understand expectations.

1. Rubrics…

2. Rubrics – The Basics
A rubric is a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of assignments.
There are three essential features:
1. evaluative criteria
2. quality definitions
3. scoring strategy
Typically, not used for smaller assignments. Also, they are declining in some
circles in favour of “top performance rubric” on the following slide…
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4. What are the pros and cons
of using rubrics for
assessment?
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5. The Good
• They provide consistent and uniform standards.
• Rubrics make marking quick and efficient.
• Well-defined categories act as a student guide and provide
feedback.
• Students have come to expect them. Therefore, less complaints.
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6. The Bad
• Rubrics give the appearance of objectiveness but they still involve
human judgment, which is imprecise and subjective.
• Adjectives are often murky and teachers still have a lot of
discretion.
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7. The Bad
• Students sometimes see it as a way to justify a bad mark - if they
get something wrong, the teacher can prove they knew what they
were supposed to do.
• Students may not look at them – would you be more apt to read
comments or closely consider a filled out rubric (think of our
faculty evaluations)?
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8. The Bad
• In Blackboard, you can’t enter a specific mark if you’re using a
point or percentage range.
• Blackboard will break up a range, such as 1.5-4.5, into 1.5, 2.5, 3.5,
4.5 selectable in a drop down list.
• The list can’t be altered, so you can’t enter in 2, 3 or 4 (or anything
in between) marks (Thanks Gordon Ma!).
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9. The Ugly
• High scores on rubrics do not necessarily mean the assignment is
any good because often times rubrics are constricting.
• For example, a student could score well on organization, formatting,
and evidence, but have terrible spelling/grammar. Depending on
how your rubric was set up, they could still get a A or B.
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10. The Ugly
• If you don’t have a rubric, students will certainly ask for one
• Are they able to function unless every required item is spelled out
for them in a grid and assigned a point value?
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12. The Ugly
• Rubrics are designed to function as scoring guidelines, but they
serve as agents of control over what is taught and valued.
• Standardization is good if you’re a factory trying to produce robots.
• Trying to gauge students’ understanding of ideas is different
• “Compliance with the rubric tended to yield higher scores but
produced ‘vacuous’ writing” (Mabry, 1999).
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13. Best Practices
• Rubrics should be about learning. A scoring rubric may help
grading, but not help the students’ mastery of content or skills.
• Try and be less concerned with grading and more concerned with
learning.
• They should describe performance traits BUT not too narrowly
prescribe them.
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14. Best Practices
• Rubrics should allow for flexibility.
• Leave space for comments
• Try having the students help you construct a new rubric or modify
an existing one.
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15. Best Practices
• Choosing a points-based or a percent-based rubric?
• If you want to create a rubric that you can use on multiple
assignments a percent-based rubric is more flexible.
• For instance, if you create a rubric that you want to use on all
papers, from a short response to a final research paper, a percent-
based rubric will more easily convert amongst assignments.
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16. Best Practices
• Usually, the more detailed, the better.
• However, be careful with too much detail when a general
comment would fit.
• Also having too many vertical columns might be confusing and
restricting.
• Research shows that students perform significantly better when
teachers explain the rubric rather than just hand it out (De Silva).
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