Creating Scoring Rubrics
A scoring rubric is a method of classifying and categorizing student behaviors or products along a continuum. Rubrics can be used to assess writing, research reports, performances, portfolios, and problem-solving, among others. Rubrics allow faculty to evaluate or assess student work fairly efficiently. If students are taught to score their own work, they can profit from understanding the standards and criteria that faculty expect of them.
How
to create and use a scoring rubric:
1.
Determine
the characteristics of the task that you are assessing;
2.
Describe
what the best example of this characteristic looks like;
3.
Describe
the worst acceptable example of this characteristic;
4.
Determine
what would be unacceptable;
5.
You
now have three levels of assessment:
you can develop other levels in between those three if you think that
will give you meaningful information;
6.
Test
the rubric on some student work to determine whether it works;
7.
If
they were not involved in developing the rubric, teach the team of faculty
evaluating the student work how to use the rubric;
8.
Ideally,
each example of student work should be evaluated by more than one faculty
member;
9.
When
the team is using the rubric, one person ought to serve as a moderator,
reviewing the scores of different evaluators on the same student work to
determine whether there are great discrepancies;
10. If two faculty differ
substantially on the scoring of one student’s work, give the work to a third
faculty member to evaluate as a third judgment;
11. Compile all scores for each
characteristic that you are evaluating to summarize the results (Note: if each evaluator keeps notes on the
greatest weaknesses, you can use those to help understand the overall scores).
12. Analyze those areas that
appear to reflect weaknesses in student abilities.
For
examples of scoring rubrics, see the sections on portfolio assessment and
on performance assessment.