McGill's new Built around the principle of assessment for learning, PASL requires instructors to share their "expectations for all assessment tasks" by including "explicit criteria to describe the key elements of students' learning" (PASL 5.5). Unsure of how to put that into practice? One way to share assessment criteria to guide students' learning is to use a rubric.
What's a rubric?
A rubric is typically an assessment tool or set of guidelines used to promote the consistent application of learning expectations, learning objectives, or learning standards in the classroom, or to measure their attainment against a consistent set of criteria. In instructional settings, rubrics clearly define academic expectations for students and help to ensure consistency in the assessment of academic work from student to student, assignment to assignment, or course to course. Rubrics are also used as scoring instruments to determine grades or the degree to which learning standards have been demonstrated or attained by students. (adapted from Great Schools Partnership's Glossary of Educational Reform)
Why use a rubric?
Using a rubric can make providing feedback more efficient. Circling or checking off the appropriate categories is more efficient than writing comments and still provides students with feedback.
Rubrics can also help assess students' learning consistently, transparently and fairly. That's because making the assessment criteria explicit for students can increase consistency among graders by focusing attention on specific concepts, thus reducing the bias that occurs when evaluators assess nonessential elements (Henning et al., 2023).
Another good reason to use a rubric is that it can support students' learning in a variety of ways (Brookhart, 2013; Stevens et al., 2012; Suskie, 2018).
Concretely, rubrics can:
- Communicate instructor's expectations: Students will have a clear understanding of what to do and what learning they are expected to demonstrate. Ensuring all students have a shared understanding of expectations also promotes more accessible assessment practices.
- Help focus on key criteria: Developing a rubric means having to articulate what learning (i.e., knowledge, skills, values) students must demonstrate to successfully complete an assignment.
- Put students in charge of their own learning: Students can use the assessment criteria for self-assessment of their work—to see if it meets the stated expectations—and revise their work as needed prior to submission.
Keep in mind that to leverage your rubric for learning you need to share it with students when the assessment task is assigned!
Where to begin?
To help guide you as you create or revise a rubric, we suggest the following four steps:
1. Review the basics
Whether you're looking to create a rubric or revise an existing one, you'll want to be clear about the fundamentals. Use the Teaching and Learning Knowledge Base (TL KB) resource "Rubrics: The basics" to:
- Determine whether an analytic or holistic rubric suits your goals (click on the tab "Types of rubrics")
- Identify the components of a rubric (assessment criteria, performance standards, and descriptions of performance standards) (click on the tab "Create rubrics")
2. Design your rubric to promote learning
- Review examples of descriptions of performance that promote learning (in "Rubrics: The basics" click on "Promote learning")
- Watch this video on how to develop meaningful assessment criteria when building a rubric. The video walks you through four fundamental questions to ask yourself:
- What learning outcomes am I assessing?
- What does it look like to fully achieve this outcome?
- Am I focusing on what's most important?
- Have I made the criteria understandable for students and graders?
3. Make adjustments
- Once you've drafted your rubric, it can be helpful to look at other examples. You can be inspired by rubric configurations, useful language and phrasing, or criteria you may not have considered. The TL KB has an example bank that is expanding. You can search Examples of assessment tools by assessment type (e.g., presentation, essay), learning outcome (e.g., critical thinking, oral communication skills), subject (e.g., SOCI, BIOL), or course level (e.g., 200, 400).
- Adjust and revise your rubric based on feedback: Ask a colleague, try it with students, and/or book a consultation with TLS staff.
4. Set up your rubric in myCourses
Learn more
References
Brookhart, S. (2013). How to create and use rubrics for formative assessment and grading. ASCD Publications.
Henning, G., Baker, G. R., Jankowski, N. A., Lundquist, A. E., & Montenegro, E. (2023). Reframing assessment to center equity: theories, models, and practices. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Stevens, D., Levi, A., & Walvoord, B. (2012). Introduction to rubrics: An assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback, and promote student learning (2nd ed.). Stylus Publishing.
Suskie, L. (2018). Assessing student learning: A common sense guide (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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