Rubrics

What is a Rubric?

Rubric is not a form of assessment but are criteria for making an  assessment. It is a scoring method that list the criteria for a piece of work. It also articulates gradation of quality for each criterion a guide for assigning  scores to alternative assessment products. It encourage clear assessment targets and clear expectations. 

What questions do rubrics answer? 

1. By what criteria should the performance be judged? 
2. Where should you look and what should you look for to judge a  successful performance? 
3. What does the range in quality performance look like? 
4. How do you determine validly, reliably, and fairly what score should be given to a student and what that score means? 
5. How should the different levels of    quality be described and distinguished from one another? 

Types of Rubrics

1. General Rubric
• contains criteria that are general across tasks

• it can be used across similar performances
• Advantage: can use the same rubric across different tasks
• Disadvantage: feedback may not be specific enough.
2. Task Specific Rubric

• contains criteria that are unique to a specific task
• Advantage: more reliable assessment of performance on the task. 
• Disadvantage: difficult to construct rubrics for all specific tasks 
3. Holistic Rubric

• provide a single score based on an overall impression of a student’s performance on a task. 
• it does not list separate levels of performance for each criterion
• Advantages: quick scoring, provides overview of student achievement. 
• Disadvantages: does not provide detailed information, may be difficult  to provide one overall score. 
4. Analytic Rubric
• provide specific feedback along several dimensions
• it articulates levels of performance for each criterion
  
• Advantages: more detailed feedback, scoring more consistent across students and graders. 
• Disadvantage: time consuming to score

Reasons why use Rubrics

1. It is a useful tool for both teaching and evaluation of learning outcomes
2. It allow students to acquire wisdom in judging and evaluating the quality of their work in relation to the quality of the work of other students
3. Rubrics are quite efficient and tend to require less time for the teachers in evaluating student performance
4. It is easy to understand

Steps in creating Rubrics

1. Survey Models - show examples of good and not so good work
2. Define Criteria - identify qualities that define good work
3. Agree on the levels of quality - describe the best and worst level of quality
4. Practice on models - using the agreed criteria and levels of quality, evaluate the models presented in step 1
5. Use self and peer assessment - give student their task and occasionally stop them for self and peer assessment
6. Revise - always give students time to revise their work based on the feedback they get in step 5
7. Use teacher assessment - use the same rubric students used to assess

Tips in Designing Rubrics

1. use clear, precise and concise language 
   
2. specify the levels of quality through the responses: “yes,” “yes but,” “no but,” and “no”

Well designed rubrics includes:

• performance dimensions that are critical to successful task completion
• criteria that reflect all the important outcomes of the performance task
• a rating  scale that provide a usable, easily interpreted score
• criteria that reflect concrete references, in clear language understandable to students, parent, and other teachers