Joel VannerIntroduction
Rubrics are an important tool for effective course design in higher education. They provide a clear and consistent framework for evaluating student work, which can help you identify areas where your course design may need improvement. By using rubrics to assess student work, you can better understand how well your course is meeting its learning objectives and make adjustments as necessary. Incorporating rubrics into your course design also demonstrates to students that you value transparency and fairness in the evaluation process, which can enhance their overall learning experience.
Designing and Implementing Rubrics
Rubrics are sets of scoring guidelines that can be used to provide consistency in evaluating student work. A rubric assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment. They can be used for a variety of assignments: research papers, group projects, portfolios, and presentations.
Benefits
Rubrics benefit both instructors and students.
Instructors | Students |
Time Saving: Rubrics help faculty save time grading since the detailed descriptions for levels of achievement are established so it can free the instructor from writing out long comments. | Clarify expectations: coherent set of criteria for performance (from excellent to poor) as well as detailed descriptions of each level of performance. |
Provides Consistency, Removes Bias and Establishes Importance: Rubrics help make grading more transparent and fair. | Improve Learning: Students report rubrics help them with learning and achievement. Students can use rubrics to focus their efforts and self-assess their own work prior to submission. |
Justify Grading: Rubrics document why faculty awarded certain grades. Grading history is maintained. | Encourage Feedback and Reflection: Rubrics provide students with specific feedback and allow students to reflect on their performance in order to improve. |
Essential Features of a Rubric
Rubrics contain four essential features:
- a task description or a descriptive title of the task students are expected to produce or perform;
- a scale (and scoring) that describes the level of achievement (e.g., exceeds expectation, meets expectation, doesn't meet expectation);
- components/dimensions/criteria students are to attend to in completing the assignment/tasks (e.g., types of skills, knowledge, etc.); and
- description of the performance quality (performance descriptor) of the components/dimensions at each level of mastery.
Learn How It Works
Take the Designing Rubrics Interactive Lesson →
Examples
Below you will find examples of various types of rubrics. These are meant as guides as you think about and plan for how you will assess student learning through rubrics. They are not an exhaustive representation of what can or should be created but rather a launching point.
Note: These examples are broken up by type of rubric, and you can download whichever version is most useful to you. The PDF files will likely open in your browser and can be downloaded from there. Microsoft Word documents and ZIP files will download directly to your computer.
Important! Opening the ZIP file outside of Blackboard will make it unusable inside Blackboard. Once downloaded, upload it into the "Rubrics" area of your Blackboard course to view and edit it from there. To learn how to export and/or import Rubrics from/into your Blackboard course, view our Blackboard: Importing & Exporting Rubrics tutorial.
How-To Resources
The following list contains some links to how-to documentation available on the MyQ Blackboard Exams & Assignments page. For research references, visit the Designing Rubrics Interactive Lesson above.
Grade with a Blackboard Rubric →
Importing & Exporting Blackboard Rubrics →
Additional resources
