“Rubrics are not only scoring tools but also, more important, instructional illuminators.” – James Popham
Rubrics are tools commonly used to assess student work on assignments such as research papers, essays, and culminating projects. They support learning and instruction by making expectations explicit, which facilitates feedback and self-assessment (Jonsson & Svingby, 2007). Many variations of the rubric exist, however each of them generally contains evaluative criteria, quality definitions and a scoring strategy (Popham, 1997).
Evaluative criteria are the metrics used to assess the student’s performance. For example, if you were using the rubric to grade a paper, metrics might include: content, organization, and mechanics.
Quality definitions describe the criterion of different levels in the rubric. For example, you might choose to have four levels of quality describing the organization of a paper.
A scoring strategy includes procedures used to arrive at marks and grades. There are two possible strategies:
- Holistic, which requires the user to take all of the criteria into consideration and aggregate them to make an overall quality judgement; or
- Analytic, which requires the user to make a series of judgments about individual criteria. These can be combined to produce an overall mark (Dawson, 2017).
Basic Structure of a Rubric
References
Dawson, P. (2017). Assessment rubrics: Towards clearer and more replicable design, research and practice. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(3), 347-360.
Jonsson, A., & Svingby, G. (2007). The use of scoring rubrics: Reliability, validity and educational consequences. Educational Research Review, 2, 130-144.
Popham, W. J. (1997). What’s wrong- and what’s right- with rubrics. Educational Leadership, 55(2), 72-75.