Intoduction to Designing a Grading Rubric

The Rubric guide provides an introduction to learning how to use rubrics as an effective assessment tool. Using a grading rubric allows an instructor to reduce the influence of grading biases and ensures a fair and transparent process to the students before they begin the assignment.

To develop a grading rubric, you should determine:

• What do you want students to learn or accomplish from the task/assignment
• Identify the mastery criteria for assessment (e.g. details of content knowledge, research skills, or presentation skills)
• Choose a performance level as a benchmark (e.g. Excellent, Good, Bad)
• Describe the performance details. This is necessary as an instructor to understand the objectives for evaluation. If this is not clear to the instructor, then this is often difficult for students to understand. (e.g. Grammar Criteria: Only one or two grammatical errors are present in the paper)
• Test and evaluate the rubric before and after assignments with students to improve your overall rubric design. This will allow you to design the most efficient rubric that communicates exactly what is expected from the students.

Included in the Rubric guide is literature on why it is important to use rubrics and rubric templates that you may adapt for your assignments.