Perhaps some of you have heard a student say “But I don’t understand what you expect.” Or maybe the student has been more direct and said “Tell me exactly what I need to do to get an A.”

Grading rubrics can solve this problem. A rubric has been defined as a document that “articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria, or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor.” VIPEr encourages the development of rubrics as a means to both explicitly connect learning goals to the assessment of learning and as a means to communicate expectations to students.

If you are interested in exploring rubrics, the article “Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics” provides an excellent introduction. It defines and provides examples of three types of the rubrics. To help you get you started, I’ll describe some examples from my classes.

When students give short oral presentations in class, I sometimes use a holistic rubric. The students are graded on a scale from 1 to 4 and the expectations for each point value are described in the rubric. In order to earn a 4, the expectations might be “Presentation has a clear introduction and conclusion; slides are visually engaging; content is covered thoroughly.” For a 1, the description might be “Presentation did not have clear structure and slides were difficult to read.”

For more complex assignments, analytic rubrics are useful. An analytic rubric breaks down the task into different categories and describes levels of quality for each category. An example of an analytic rubric can be found in my LO on Uncle Tungsten. The rubric lists eight categories that were used to evaluate chapter summaries the students wrote. Each category was graded on a scale of 1 to 4 points. For each category, descriptions of what a 1, 2, 3, or 4 “look like” were included. This points to one of the challenges of developing a good analytic rubric--eight categories times four different scores for each category meant writing 32 descriptions. The many examples on the Rubistar website have proven useful for getting started.

The final rubric in the “Know Your Terms” article is the single-point rubric. It enables instructors to give more personalized feedback. I have done something like this in the past by including a column for personalized comments; however, the single-point approach is much better. Single-point rubrics typically has three columns. The middle column describes the basic criteria for proficiency (not excellent, not bad, but the middle). The left and right columns are blank. In the left column, labeled “Concerns,” the instructor records things that could be improved. In the right column, labeled “Advanced,” the instructor describes where the student excelled. This obviously requires more instructor time for grading, but provides better student feedback.

In closing, I hope this encourages you to use rubrics in your teaching. Oh, and to include rubrics with the learning objects you contribute!