What is a rubric?
A rubric is an assessment tool that clearly outlines marking criteria. It can be used for evaluating many types of graded student work - written assignments, presentations, class participation, overall grades and more.
A rubric provides a set of criteria that outlines the important components of the activity being planned or evaluated. Rubrics help clarify the criteria and expectations for the assignment. When used effectively, rubrics can:
Provide timely and detailed feedback that students can use
Encourages critical thinking/self-evaluation
Communicate expectations to students
Expose the component skills of any task
Encourage fair and consistent marking
Rubric Structure
A rubric is structured like a matrix which includes two main components: criteria (listed on the left side of a matrix) and their descriptors (listed across the top of the matrix). When developing rubrics, we should first select the most important assessment criteria which will be used to evaluate the student product. Assessment criteria listed in rubrics vary by task, discipline and course level.
Once you identified the most important assessment criteria, you are ready to write descriptions of what student performance looks for each assessment criteria. These descriptions are called assessment standards. They can be represented through letter grades, number of points, or descriptors of quality levels, such as exemplary, competent and developing.
Standards describes what student performance looks like at different levels of quality
usually 3-5 quality levels per rubric
Source:
http://www.queensu.ca/teachingandlearning/modules/assessments/34_s4_04_rubrics_and_marking_schemes.html
