Why are Rubrics helpful?
Rubrics are multi-dimensional scoring guidelines that can be used to provide consistency in evaluating student work. They spell-out the scoring criteria so that multiple teachers, using the same rubric for a student's essay, for example, would arrive at the same score or grade. Likewise, rubrics help an individual instructor stay consistent when grading different students and at different times.
Where can you use a Rubric?
You can attach a rubric to any of the following course tools or activities:
- Competencies
- Discussion topics
- Dropbox submission folders
- eLearn ePortfolio
- Grade items
- Quizzes
- Surveys
Types of rubrics
There are two types of rubrics available for use:
- Holistic Rubrics - Single criterion rubrics (one-dimensional) used to assess participants' overall achievement on an activity or item based on predefined achievement levels. Holistic rubrics may use a percentages or text-only scoring method.
- Analytic Rubrics - Two-dimensional rubrics with levels of achievement as columns and assessment criteria as rows. Allows you to assess participants' achievements based on multiple criteria using a single rubric. You can assign different weights (value) to different criteria and include an overall achievement by totaling the criteria. With analytic rubrics, levels of achievement display in columns and your assessment criteria display in rows. Analytic rubrics may use points, custom points, or text only scoring method. Points and custom points analytic rubrics may use both text and points to assess performance; with custom points, each criterion may be worth a different number of points. For both points and custom points, an overall score is provided based on the total number of points achieved. The overall score determines whether the activity is achieved.
This 3-minute video demonstrates how to create an analytic rubric in eLearn: