You give an assignment- perhaps an essay or a media project.  Students turn in the assignment.  You grade the assignment and return it to the students.  Students have many questions about their grade.  Sound familiar?

You thought you explained the material, made sure the assignment was clearly outlined, and gave ample time to be completed.  And yet the students don’t understand why they missed points or got a B instead of an A.  While you know why the assignment rated a B+ and not an A, can you articulate a list of criteria to the students with points assigned to each item?

Creating rubrics for subjective assessments could keep you from questioning your sanity in the middle of reading dozens of essays.  The dictionary defines a rubric as “a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests” but it is much more.  It is a scorecard that evaluates a student’s performance based on a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical or letter score. Rubrics can be used as a guide for both students and teachers.  When given in conjunction with the assignment it allows students to clearly understand the criteria and quality standards on which their work will be judged.  In the grading process, rubrics help faculty to follow the preset standards and remain objective in their assessment.  As a third step, students can be given the scored rubric with their returned assignment.  They can see their strengths and their weak areas  and will become better judges of their  own and others work.

Rubrics are not new.  The word origin goes back to Middle English, Latin, and Anglo-French meaning red and was found as the decorative text or instructions in medieval texts and liturgical documents.  In the academic world, the notes (in red ink) that an instructor placed in the margins of a graded paper were known as rubrics.

Rubrics take time to write but in the end they allow students to measure their performance against stated criteria while promoting consistent and objective grading.  There are several steps in creating rubrics.  In general, begin with measuring a stated objective then use a range to describe performance (exemplary, good, fair, poor) finally, list criteria or characteristics for the performance levels assigning points each level.

You will find that rubrics improve student work and will lead to increased learning.