Tips for Writing Assessment Rubrics

Rubrics are effective and efficient tools for conducting assessment projects, particularly when multiple faculty are working collaboratively.  Benefits include:

• More valid, reproducible, and fair results 
• Reduced bias by allowing the focus to be only on the submitted work 
• Improved consistency in grading amongst faculty
• Increased efficiency and allows students more timely access to feedback

The steps to developing a rubric include:

Step 1

Select a Course Learning Outcome (CLO) to assess and decide which modulus learning objective(s) (MLOs) best support or align with the accomplishment of that CLO.

For most assessment projects, more than one content area or skill will be assessed. So, most rubrics should be developed to assess more than one MLO. These individually assessed MLOs will result in an overall assessment of the CLO. When developing the rubric, it is important to include all the items that a student will complete to achieve the essential components of the CLO. For example:

A CLO like: “Construct a critical interpretation of a text for an audience, either written or presented, using relevant sources.”

Would require a student to:

• Demonstrate content knowledge
• Use appropriate resources
• Develop a presentation

Step 2

Determine the number of criteria for the rubric and define those criteria. 

Most rubrics will have between three and ten criteria. Once the number of criteria is determined, descriptive titles should be written for each such that other faculty who use the rubric will understand the content to be assessed.  See the column labeled Criteria in the sample document. 

Step 3

Select Achievement Level Labels

The third step of rubric design is determining the levels of achievement that will become labels for each level in the rubric (see columns 2-4 in the sample rubric). While many options for levels can be found online, the Institutional Assessment Committee asks that the following levels be used to simplify college-wide data collection:

• Proficient - exceeds the requirements of the criterion
• Competent - meets the requirements of the criterion
• Developing - does not meet the requirements of the criterion
• Non-participating- for students who are enrolled at the time the assessment was conducted, but did not complete the assessment 

Step 4

Describe the characteristics of each level for each criterion.

The next step in rubric development includes adding a description/detail for each achievement level for each criterion. When writing these details try to avoid using subjective language and statements that cause the levels to be unclear or have overlap. Instead try to write clear, tangible metrics. Examples for Presentation-Introduction/ Proficient might be: 

• States the purpose of the paper in the first sentence of the paper and explains                              the importance of this topic.
• States the 3 topics and briefly describes each in the Introduction.
• The introduction has fewer than two grammatical errors.

Avoid statements like: 

• The introduction is interesting.
• The grammar is very good.

Step 5

Assign point values to each area of the rubric and determine the scores needed to achieve each level overall.

The next step is to assign point values to each criterion at each level. Some of the criterion may be weighted more heavily in the rubric. Then, determine the total number of points needed to achieve each of the three levels. 

At this point, it may be a good idea to evaluate the rubric and the scoring on some previously submitted assignments.   Next, decide if tweaks are needed to create a rubric that is fair and accurately reflects student achievement. It may be necessary to add or remove criterion or adjust the point system. Additionally, decide if the assessment is easy to use when grading. It is also recommended to share the rubric with other faculty who may use the tool to see if equivalent results are obtained on an assignment.

Sample Rubric using the levels of achievement defined by the Institutional Assessment Committee

Title: Rubric For “Construct a critical interpretation of a text for an audience, either written or presented, using relevant sources.”

• Proficient - exceeds the requirements of the criterion
• Competent - meets the requirements of the criterion
• Developing - does not meet the requirements of the criterion
• Non-participating- for students who are enrolled at the time the assessment was conducted, but did not complete the assessment