A rubric is a scoring guide. A rubric can be used to provide scores for just about anything that we evaluate – from student work to the quality of a movie or a vacation.
One type of rubric allows the evaluator to assess the quality of the whole, by breaking it down into assessing the quality of its parts (different criteria). For example:
The rubric provides a score that reflects a level of quality. How many levels one wants to have, and what labels one puts on the different levels of quality, is up to the creator of the rubric. Here are some examples of how the levels of quality might be labeled (the first four examples have 4 levels of quality; the fifth example has 6 levels of quality):
There are different types of rubrics.
- Analytic Rubrics will individually score each criterion and then either keep the scores separate, or use them to provide an overall score. (For example, “Our vacation was a “4” for the FUN FACTOR, but a “1” for the EXPENSE FACTOR.”)
- Holistic Rubrics take all the criteria into consideration but sum them up into a single description for each level of quality. These rubrics do not score the different criteria separately.
Benefits of using rubrics:
- Provides clear expectations.
- May be used to allow students to redo work, but still meet deadlines.
- Helps teachers to know when it is necessary to re-teach.
- Helps teachers decide what is important.
- Puts responsibility on students. They are in control of what grade they want.
- Motivates students to challenge themselves.
- Motivates students to consistently hand in quality work.
- It is fair, and it is real life.
