How To Create A Rubric For A Writing Assignment

Overview

A rubric is a tool to communicate your expectations for complex and subjective assignments, making grading more consistent and objective.

Who's doing this at UMB?

The culminating assignment in Dr. Michelle Pearce's MHS 627, Writing for the Public course, is an opinion-editorial. To ensure students are effectively using skills covered in the course, Pearce provides them with a comprehensive rubric describing all the elements the op-ed must include, as well as a description of what each element looks like at different levels of performance. Students are encouraged to read the rubric before beginning the assignment to guide their writing. They are encouraged to read it again after they have completed their writing, as a way to self-assess before submitting their work. When the students and instructor both use the grading rubric, there are no surprises when it comes to the final grade.

How can I do this?

Decide if the assignment is "rubric worthy." Is the assignment complex, with multiple components? Is it an assignment in which you're evaluating the quality of the work, rather than providing an objective score? Could students perform at different levels on different aspects of the work, making the entire thing difficult to evaluate? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, a rubric might be helpful.
Break down the assignment into the components you most value. Use the "backward design" approach to identify the specific skills you are looking for in the assignment. For example, Pearce evaluates her students' opinion-editorials in the following criteria: "Clarity of the Main Argument," "Interpretation of Results," "Use of Jargon," and "Style and Mechanics," among others.
Determine how to weight each criterion. You don't have to assign each criterion the same value. In the op-ed example, "Clarity of Argument" is worth a total of 30 points, while "Use of Jargon" is weighted 6 points. (You can also use percentages).
Describe 3 to 4 levels of performance for each criterion. First, decide what you'll call each level of performance. We recommend language that demonstrates the iterative nature of learning — for example, "Exceeds Expectations," "Meets Expectations," and "Approaches Expectations" (rather than "Excellent," "Fair," and "Poor.") Then, describe what "Exceeds Expectations" looks like for each criteria. Use former student products as a guide, and try be clear about your expectations without suggesting students need to follow an exact recipe. Repeat this process for the remaining levels of performance. (Note: The middle levels of performance tend to be the trickiest to write.)
Decide whether to share the rubric in advance. A rubric can be used just for grading, but they are most effective when shared with students in advance to communicate your expectations about the assignment.
Get feedback and revise. Ask former students, your faculty colleagues, or a representative from the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning for feedback on your rubric. You'll also find areas to tweak after using the rubric a few times.

Why are rubrics important?

A rubric will never take all the subjectivity out of grading, but clarifying assignment expectations and describing the levels of performance can help ensure consistency when grading. Courses with TAs or other grading assistants can use rubrics to norm expectations among the group. Finally, giving your students the rubric in advance can help them make decisions about the assignment to align their work with your expectations. It also helps to reduce student questions about why a grade was received.

How can this be done online?

Most learning management systems, including Blackboard, have a rubric tool that you can associate with an assignment. The rubric tool allows you to click inside the level of performance for each criteria, and sends those scores directly to the Grade Center. Instructors can also provide written feedback on each criterion and the assignment as a whole.

For more instruction on how to use a rubric in Blackboard visit: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Grade/Rubrics

What is a Rubric?

Other Resources

Brookhart, S. M. (2018, April). Appropriate criteria: key to effective rubrics . In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 3, p. 22). Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2018.00022/full
Jonsson, A., & Svingby , G. (2007). The use of scoring rubrics: Reliability, validity and educational consequences . Educational research review, 2(2), 130-144. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X07000188
Shipman, D., Roa, M., Hooten, J., & Wang, Z. J. (2012). Using the analytic rubric as an evaluation tool in nursing education: The positive and the negative . Nurse education today, 32(3), 246-249. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260691711000943
Using Rubrics in Blackboard: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Grade/Rubrics

Creative Commons License
Creating a Rubric by Erin Hagar and Michelle Pearce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Revised 1/24/2020