Rubrics: Score One for the Instructor and One for the Student

There are two simple reasons why you should use rubrics in your online course. The most important reason is that rubrics serve to inform students how their assignments and other work will be graded. As a scoring guide, a well-constructed rubric delineates a consistent set of precisely defined criterion statements that can be used to assess student work. The process of creating a scoring rubric causes you, the instructor, to think deeply about each element of an assignment. The idea is to arrive at criterion statements that define varying levels of excellence about those elements. Sharing the final rubric with students provides them with a clear understanding of what constitutes excellence in the preparation of their assignments, thus allowing them to self-assess their work before submitting it to you for evaluation.

Another reason for using rubrics is to make your job of assessing student work that much easier. Creating a quality rubric requires a great deal of up-front thinking but, in the long run, the process of grading student work is greatly reduced. The use of rubrics also makes the grading of student work more consistent. While there is always a level of subjectivity in assessing student work, rubrics help reduce the tendency to compare one student’s work against another.

In their watershed work, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winter (1992) indicated that a carefully constructed scoring rubric will:

• Help teachers define excellence and plan instruction that will help students achieve it;

• Communicate to students what constitutes excellence and how to evaluate their own work;

• Communicate goals and results to parents and others;

• Help teachers or other raters be accurate, unbiased, and consistent in scoring assignments and projects; and

• Document procedures used in making important judgments about student work.

There is no standardized way of creating a rubric, nor is there a standardized way a rubric should look. There are, however, certain elements that should be included in every scoring rubric. Herman et al. (1992) suggested the following elements of a scoring rubric:

• One or more traits or dimensions that serve as the basis for judging the student response.

• Definitions and examples to clarify the meaning of each trait or dimension.

• A scale of values on which to rate each dimension.

• Standards of excellence for specified performance levels accompanied by models or examples of each level.

Table 1 shows one way to begin structuring a rubric for assessing the dimension of student participation in small group chats (note that a complete rubric would address additional dimensions). Upon reading this portion of the rubric students would understand what is expected of them in order to achieve high marks for their work in small groups. Using rubrics like this—and chat logs—instructors can shorten the time required to assess student participation and remove much of the subjectivity so often associated with assessing group work in online courses.

There are, of course, many things that need to be considered when constructing rubrics. For example, in Table 1, each of the items might be weighted differently, thereby placing more emphasis on desired performance indicators. Also, the headings that serve to denote a certain level of “competency” may also be changed to reflect varying levels of acceptable work.

My purpose in preparing this column was to convince you to consider adding rubrics to your assessment arsenal. I hope I have achieved that goal. If I have, then the next step for you is to visit any of the Websites listed below to read more about how to construct and integrate rubrics into your courses. Using rubrics in your courses will ultimately score points with your students (pun intended).