DEVELOPING A RUBRIC
Questions to ask when developing a rubric:
1. What criteria must be present in student work to be able to qualify it as high quality?
2. How many levels of achievement should be present?
3. What is a clear description for each level of quality?
4. What are the consequences of performing at each level?
5. What grading scheme will be used in the rubric?
6. What aspects of the rubric are good and bad; and how to improve the rubric?
7. Is the product more important than the process; or are they valued as equal?
Different ways of starting:
- collect student work and try to score it using your existent rubric; pay attention to and details and questions might arise and use them to perfect your rubric
- collect student work and sort them in different groups based by quality, then describe the features of each sorted level. Write specific details for each performance level. Think about different grading levels when placing the student work into different groups, this will make a link between your rubric and grading.
- list all particular details of a performance that you are interested to know about. The most important dimensions of performance will form your rubric’s traits (thus analytical rubric will be developed)
- read what other experts know about the skills and the different levels of performance you want to consider. Search for other rubrics that describe the same skills or performance. Compare that with your rubric traits. Write a clear and neutral definition for each trait. Neutral definitions describe the trait and do not label good or poor performance.
- Find multiple examples for each of the different levels of your rubric
METARUBRIC
To evaluate your rubric you have to consider each of the following features of your rubric:
1. Content (coverage) – tells students what they need in order to succeed for the respective assignment. The rubric content should cover ALL that is essential and leave out details that will not be graded. Leave space to your students to present the content in different modalities if the modality of presentation does not have to follow a very specific pattern, otherwise everyone will try to fit a certain pattern that you cover in the rubric.
2. Clarity (detail) – a rubric must describe in enough detail the dimensions of performance that two raters understand the rubric in the same way and would evaluate the same way a certain performance/product. It is always good to have samples of student work for each level. Avoid just listing categories of evaluation without giving a definition of the category. Explain what each level means so that if two raters use your rubric to evaluate the same product/performance they should rate the same way.
3. Usability – a rubric must be practical, so that a scored/graded performance will be reflection of the rubric traits (so, that the student will not question “why?” the performance/product resulted in a certain score). The rubric needs to help students be successful, and understand what is necessary to correct if they do not do well.
4. Technical quality – your rubric must be fair to all students (language level used in the rubric, and ESL students). The rubric must have a good reliability - If two raters use the rubric to rate the same work they should assign pretty close scores; raters should be in agreement.
GRADING WITH RUBRICS
1. Rubrics are used in order to show students what are the criteria, expected standards that we use for grading and assessment.
2. Rubrics help also to inform students about different degrees (levels) of performance (e.g., poor, good, excellent); in consequence students will be able to self-evaluate themselves and prepare for the assessment.
3. Rubrics are models of standard for students. In developing a rubric students can be asked to participate set the criteria and describe different levels, then the teacher can use the suggestions gathered from students.
4. Rubrics are useful in the process of assessment when using different graders, or when it is needed a panel of assessors, in order to control for grader differences.
Use of rubrics in grading
- Decide ahead of time how many scale points will meet your needs for best performance
- Decide how many traits (specific dimensions) you want to measure, what are the important dimensions of the performance/product that the rubric will measure
- It is not advised to use strict percentages to convert scores from each particular assessment into letter grades; a better choice is to tell the students that all assignments will be scored on one or more traits and points will be cumulated (or if you count only the final performance then only the last performance in the semester should be transformed into letter grades).
o Example:
- on a rubric that uses scores on a scale 1-5, a “3” is described as average (B). However, when the obtained score is divided by the total possible score (3/5), the percentage obtained (60%), often would represent a failing score (F)
- Try to come up with a logic rule to convert scores/points to letter grade instead of using percentages.
Example1:
- taking into consideration obtained scores on a series of assignments;
- At least 40% scores of 5, and no more than 10% scores lower than 4 = A
- At least 10% scores of 5, and no more than 30% scores lower than 4 = B
- At least 20% scores higher than 4, and no more than 10% lower than 3 = C
- At least 10% scores higher than 4, and no more than 30% lower than 3 = D
- Anything lower than the above = F
Example 2:
- add all points from a series of assignments then use a logical formula to transform the total points into letter grades:
91-100 =A; 81-90 = B; 71-80 = C; 61-70= D; below 69 =F.
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