Rubrics

Introduction to Rubric Creation

A rubric is a scoring guide used to evaluate performance assessments by outlining clear expectations for both instructors and learners. At its most basic level, a rubric consists of three main components: criteria, performance levels, and descriptors. The criteria refer to the specific skills or knowledge areas that are being assessed, such as knowledge or understanding, performance or product excellence, or dispositions (see Performance Assessments). Performance levels define the different degrees of achievement, typically ranging from "Advanced" to "Foundational" with intermediate levels for "Mastery" and "Near Mastery." Each performance level is detailed through descriptors, which are detailed descriptions of what each level of performance looks like for a given criterion.

Rubrics are particularly useful in performance assessments because they offer consistent and objective scoring across complex tasks. Performance assessments often task learners with demonstrating higher-order thinking skills, such as evaluation, critical thinking, or collaboration. Without a rubric, assessment of these complex tasks can become subjective, relying on a instructor’s interpretation or judgment alone. Such subjectivity may cause interpretations of learner performance may vary between instructors. A rubric standardizes this process, ensuring that each learner's work is assessed fairly based on pre-determined criteria.

Rubrics also provide learners with a clear path to success when instructed to use performance assessment to demonstrate learning. A rubric makes the performance assessment process more focused, transparent, and goal-oriented. A rubric breaks down complex tasks into specific, observable elements and the descriptions of various performance levels makes it easier for learners to understand instructors' expectations and how to progress toward meeting them. This transparency guides learners as they work on their assignments and allows them to self-assess their progress throughout their performance or product completion.

Rubrics are essential tools for evaluating performance assessments because they provide a structured, clear way to measure learner work. This chapter focuses on how to create a well-constructed rubric to ensure that assessments are fair, consistent, and transparent, offering both instructors and learners a clear understanding of expectations and progress.

Types of Rubrics

When creating a rubric, it's important to choose the type of rubric that best suits the task at hand and the learning outcomes you're assessing. There are three main types of rubrics, each offering a different approach to evaluating learners' work: Holistic Rubrics, Analytic Rubrics, and Single-Point Rubrics.

Holistic Rubrics

A holistic rubric assigns a single score to a student’s overall performance based on a teacher's general judgment. Rather than breaking the task into separate components, the teacher evaluates the work as a whole. This type of rubric is useful when you need a quick assessment or when the overall quality of the work is more important than the individual parts. For example, holistic rubrics are often used in creative arts, such as grading an art piece or a musical performance, where the teacher is judging the overall impression rather than specific, measurable skills. However, because holistic rubrics don't provide detailed feedback on specific areas, they are less effective for guiding student improvement in complex tasks. Their lack of specificity also welcome bias and subjectivity in providing valid and reliable scores across a collection of assessments.

Analytic Rubrics

Analytic rubrics, on the other hand, break down the performance into multiple criteria, each scored separately. This kind of rubric is the kind we see most often in education and training. For instance, if you're assessing a group science project, you might create distinct criteria for knowledge of the scientific method, accuracy of data, presentation quality, and evidence of collaboration. Each of these criteria would then be rated on its own scale, allowing for more precise feedback. Analytic rubrics are ideal for assignments where multiple skills or assessment targets are being evaluated, such as a research project and subsequent presentation that would include assessment of knowledge, understanding, product, and performance. Analytic rubrics provide students with a detailed understanding of their strengths and areas for improvement, making it an excellent tool for both formative and summative assessments.

Single-Point Rubrics

A single-point rubric is a streamlined approach where only the proficiency level is described, with space on either side for feedback on what exceeded or did not meet expectations. Instead of outlining several levels of performance for each criterion, a single-point rubric focuses on what the student should achieve, allowing more flexibility for teacher comments. This type of rubric works well for creative projects, such as a writing assignment or a performance, where the focus is on meeting the standard and allowing space for personalized feedback. Single-point rubrics can also be helpful in fostering growth, as they encourage targeted feedback on specific aspects of student work without overwhelming them with multiple performance levels. The simplicity of single-point rubrics can make them more ideal for formative assessments than analytic rubrics.

When to Use Each Type

As hinted at above, there are times when one of these types of rubrics may be more appropriate to use than another type. Below are simple descriptions of when each type of rubric may be relied upon.

• Holistic Rubrics: Best suited for situations where a quick, overall judgment is needed, such as evaluating a performance, an art project, or a written reflection. When time constraints make detailed feedback impractical, it is often best to use a holistic approach.
  
• Analytic Rubrics: Ideal for tasks where several criteria need to be measured separately, such as a science project, a research paper, or a group presentation. This type of rubric is great for detailed feedback and is especially useful when assessing both the process and final outcome of a performance or product.
• Single-Point Rubrics: Excellent for creative or open-ended tasks, where the focus is on meeting a standard and individualized feedback is key, such as a writing assignment or design project. These are also great for formative assessments that focus on providing learners with feedback so they can improve on their demonstrations of learning before seeing a more summative breakdown of abilities or understanding.
  

Each type of rubric serves a different purpose, and choosing the right one depends on the nature of the task, the depth of feedback you wish to provide, and the learning goals you're targeting.

Steps for Creating a Rubric

Designing an any kind of rubric requires careful planning to ensure that it accurately reflects the skills and knowledge you are assessing. Below, we detail the process for creating an analytic rubric, breaking the process down into four essential steps: (1) defining the purpose of the assessment, (2) identifying performance criteria, (3) designing the performance rating scale, and (4) writing clear descriptors for each performance level.

Step 1: Define the Purpose of Your Assessment

The first step in creating an analytic rubric is to clearly define the purpose of your performance assessment. Start by identifying the goal of the task—what specific skills or knowledge do you want students to demonstrate? How will they be demonstrating these skills or understandings? Once you understand what it is that you want to measure, you will need to align those measurements to the demonstrations of learning provided in the previous chapter.

To determine whether you are assessing knowledge or understanding, you can align your goals with the appropriate cognitive level from Bloom’s Taxonomy, which categorizes cognitive skills from lower-order thinking skills (such as remembering or understanding) to higher-order thinking skills (such as analyzing or creating). If the demonstration of learning primarily focuses on remembering or understanding, then it will be an demonstration of knowledge. If, on the other hand, the assessment focuses more on applying knowledge, analyzing content, evaluating information, or creating arguments then your assessment is a demonstration of reasoning. For example, if you are assessing a learner presentation on environmental science, the goal might be to evaluate their ability to analyze data, evaluate sources of evidence, and create an argument about climate change solutions. Such measurements are demonstrations of reasoning. Therefore, you will need to clarify expectations for demonstrating reasoning in your rubric to align the measurements with the learning outcomes you intend to measure.

To determine whether you are assessing a product or a performance, you can consider what it is that students will be submitting as their demonstration of learning. If the student is going to submit some kind of static artifact -- an essay, a work of art, a slide presentation -- then you will be assessing a demonstration of product. If the performance assessment will require the observation of some kind of live demonstration -- a presentation, a psychomotor skill, a musical performance -- then you will be assessing a demonstration of performance skills. It is important to note that at times you might also have a combination of these methods. If learners are going to submit a video recording of a psychomotor skill or an audio recording of a speech or musical performance, then the recording would require the assessment of a product and the demonstration within the recording would require the assessment of a performance. Regardless of the case, we will need to determine rubric criteria that communicate expectations for the product or the performance.

To determine whether you are assessing dispositions, consider whether the performance assessment will measure learner's affective domain or interpersonal skills. If part of your performance assessment requires learners to demonstrate perseverance, optimism, or a growth mindset then you are measuring a demonstration of dispositions. Likewise, if your performance assessment is measuring skills like collaboration, teamwork, or being open to those who have backgrounds or characteristics that differ from our own, then you might also be measuring a demonstration of dispositions. In both cases, you will need to be careful to craft criteria descriptions that explain what behaviors you will look for as evidence of these dispositions. Because the affective domain can be difficult to observe, these criteria must be carefully crafted with detail to provide transparency and objective measures.

Step 2: Identify Performance Criteria

Once the purpose is defined, the next step is to identify the specific performance criteria you will assess. These are the key elements or skills that reflect what students should demonstrate through their performance. For most analytic rubrics, you will choose 3-5 criteria. If you have fewer than three criteria, then it is probably best to consider a single-point rubric or a holistic rubric instead of an analytic rubric. If you have more than five criteria, then you likely need to break your performance assessment down into multiple performance assessments. Having more than five criteria can hinder learners ability to use the rubric as a guide toward meeting your performance expectations.

You will need at least one criteria for each of the demonstrations determined in Step 1. Please consider the following example of a presentation on World War I.

Your criteria will need to have succinct titles to help learners understand the expectations and a general description of each criterion that provides learners with the ideal outcome for each criteria. Each criterion description should focus on observable behaviors or products—things you can objectively see or evaluate. For example, if assessing creativity, you might observe whether the student uses a novel approach or presents a unique perspective in their work. The titles for the criteria in the example above are in bold; descriptions for each criteria are in the following example.

Step 3: Design the Performance Rating Scale

Next, you need to create a performance rating scale to evaluate each criterion. Most rubrics use 3-5 levels of performance, such as Proficient, Developing, Basic, and Foundational. If you are using mastery-based grading, you might instead use labels such as Above Mastery, Mastery, Near Mastery, and Foundational. Achievement-based rubrics will place the expected level of performance, the Proficient level, at the topmost level of performance in the rubric. Mastery-based rubrics, on the other hand, will place the expected level of performance as the penultimate level of performance, or the second highest level. Mastery-based rubrics therefore allow learners to meet or exceed expectations.

Achievement Rubric or Mastery Rubric

Deciding whether an achievement-based or mastery-based rubric is best for you depends largely on your content area and the standards that you are trying to measure. If your standards mostly follow a cyclical pattern, such as the performance standard in the arts, physical education, or English language arts, then you will likely want to use a mastery-based approach. If your standards build on one another in a more stair-like shape, such as standards in math and science, then an achievement-based approach might be better.

Likewise, most formative assessments will use a mastery-based rubric, allowing learners to see where they currently are in their skill development and where they need to go, based on the descriptions of each performance level. Summative assessments of skills that will be tested again, such as writing skills in English language arts or psychomotor skills in physical education, or summative assessments of skills that can continue to be improved upon at higher levels, such as creating works of art or completing musical performances, might also use a mastery-based approach.

Organizing the Rubric

Regardless of the approach you choose, it is best practice to order your performance levels with the highest level of the left. This is mostly because we read left to right in English speaking countries, and it therefore increases the chances of learners reading our highest level of expectations first or at a glance. This is also because it makes adding performance levels easier if we need to create an additional intermediary level or a "zero credit" level because it will shift fewer performance levels around.

Allocating Points

The final part of completing your performance rating scale is to determine the allocation of points for every criterion at each level. Much like you would do to establish content validity with traditional assessments, you want to make sure that you allocate points based on the most important criteria based on alignment with your standards. Consider the previous example of the World War I presentation, are the demonstration of presentation skills or product as important as the demonstration of reasoning or understanding? If not, then these criteria should carry different weights in the assessment.

What if we transitioned the World War I assessment from a presentation to an essay? Would the assessment of product (grammar, formatting style, page-length, etc.) be as important as the assessment of knowledge or reasoning? If not, then the conventions of the paper should be worth fewer points that the ideas on the paper.

What if instead of this being a history paper it was a paper in English language arts? In an English class would the assessment of product (grammar, formatting style, page-length, etc.) be as important as the assessment of knowledge or reasoning? If so, then we might have a rubric that offers similar point totals for these different criteria.

Generally, the second highest performance level should be worth 80-90% of the points for the criterion. Your rubric point values should be in ranges of 90-100% (top), 80-90% (2nd level), 60-80% (3rd level), and then less than 60% (lowest level). In nearly all cases, the top level will always be worth 100% of the points for that criterion. The only exception is if you are saving 100% for standout examples of performance - things that really "wow" you. Such a practice is generally frowned upon due to its implicit bias. In some cases, you might also having an additional 0% level if not enough evidence is provided to determine performance level.

Table 1 presents an example of what a rubric might look like for the World War I presentation after completing Step 3.

Table 1. World War I Performance Assessment Rubric After Step 3

Step 4: Writing Descriptors

In the final step, you describe what each performance level looks like. This provides clarity for both teachers and students about how different levels of achievement are distinguished.

Each criterion should have performance level descriptions that follow two general guidelines:

1. The descriptions should clearly differentiate between levels of performance.
2. The descriptions should be based on observable and measurable criteria—such as how many times a student performs a behavior, how consistently it is performed, or the quality of the performance.

When designing performance descriptions, it’s important to avoid rubric gaps or overlaps. Rubric gaps occur when there’s a missing level between two performance descriptions, leaving some performances unscorable. This error usually occurs if we have more than one of the variables listed above and we change both more than variable between levels. Overlaps happen when a performance can fit into multiple levels, making it unclear where to assign the score. This error frequently occurs when we use an amount or frequency variable and fail to create unique ranges within each performance level. Table 2 provides examples of criteria that suffer from these common rubric errors.

Table 2. Examples of Rubric Gaps and Overlaps

To provide more examples of what criteria written with amount, frequency, and intensity variables look like, we have included examples below of performance level descriptions for a criterion assessing teamwork in a group project. Each set of descriptions focuses on a different performance description variable.

Amount

• Advanced Mastery: The student leads 3 group meetings (amount) in which members of the group contribute thoughtful ideas and are engaged.
• Mastery: The student leads 2 group meetings in which members of the group contribute thoughtful ideas and are engaged.
• Near Mastery: The student leads 1 group meeting in which members of the group contribute thoughtful ideas and are engaged.
• Foundational: The student does not lead a group meeting in which members of the group contribute thoughtful ideas and are engaged.

Frequency

• Advanced Mastery: The student almost always (frequency) contributes thoughtful ideas, facilitates group discussions, and ensures all group members are engaged.
• Mastery: The student almost always contributes thoughtful ideas, facilitates group discussions, and ensures all group members are engaged.
• Near Mastery: The student consistently contributes thoughtful ideas, facilitates group discussions, and ensures all group members are engaged.
• Foundational: The student minimally contributes thoughtful ideas, facilitates group discussions, and ensures all group members are engaged.

By clearly differentiating performance levels and focusing on measurable actions, you create a rubric that provides students with specific, actionable feedback and ensures that your assessments are fair and objective.

Using the Rubric to Assess Student Work

Conclusion