Overview
Rubrics provide structure and information that both students and faculty value. For students, rubrics take the guesswork out of how faculty will evaluate their work. For faculty and TAs/graders, rubrics provide an easy to follow, objective way of measuring levels of student achievement and ensure fair grading. This in turn speeds up grading, reduces student questions, provides useful feedback, and can prevent implicit bias.
Types of Rubrics
- Developmental Rubrics break an assignment down into separate pieces. While time-consuming to create, this type of rubric shows students exactly where they might be missing the mark.
- Holistic Rubrics can be expressed with letter grades, point allocations, full narrative, or simple words from “outstanding” to “needs improvement”. The best holistic rubrics have a combination of the above.
- Checklist Rubrics assess students on simple completion and not necessarily quality.
Examples of Rubric Use
- In a writing assignment: A rubric might assess clarity, organization, grammar, and the use of evidence.
- In a presentation: A rubric might assess content, delivery, visual aids, and time management.
- In a discussion: A rubric might assess participation, engagement, and contribution to the discussion.
Benefits of Using Rubrics
- Transparency - Creating and sharing a rubric with your students makes your expectations clear and transparent. Students know what you want from them in the assignment when they have a rubric.
- Consistency - Using a rubric can make your grading more consistent among all students. If you stick to the rubric components when reviewing assignments you will be more likely to grade fairly and consistently. This is especially important if more than one person will be grading assignments.
- Reduces grade complaints - When students know your expectations and can see what they missed in a rubric, they are less likely to question the grade you assign.
- Clarity - Creating a rubric forces you to think through the criteria for the assignment before you share it with students, providing a better structure and clarity for your students.
- Reduces bias - When you use a rubric for grading, you grade based on the elements in the assignment and not what you know about the student.
- Accessibility – A well-designed rubric will be accessible to all students and remove any ambiguity in the grading process.
Rubrics in Canvas
Creating rubrics in your course is easy with Canvas. The rubric is readily available to students when they view assignment criteria and also easily accessible to you when you grade. To learn how to set up a rubric in Canvas, review these Canvas resources:
- Read Adding a Rubric in Canvas
- Watch Rubrics Overview (Instructors)
- Read How Do I Add a Rubric to an Assignment
Resources
For more, review these additional resources:
- How Do Rubrics Help?, from Edutopia
- Creating and Using Rubrics, from Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excelence and Educational Innovation
- VALUE Rubrics, Open educational resource rubrics from AAC&U
Support
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