What is assessment rubric ?

A rubric makes explicit a range of assessment criteria and expected performance standards. Assessors evaluate a student's performance against all of these, rather than assigning a single subjective score. You can use rubrics to structure discussions with students about different levels of performance on an assessment task. They can employ the rubric during peer assessment and self-assessment, to generate and justify assessments.

 

Benefits of using assessment rubrics:

• provide a framework that clarifies assessment requirements and standards of performance for different grades. In this, they support assessment as learning; students can see what is important and where to focus their learning efforts.
• enable very clear and consistent communication with students about assessment requirements and about how different levels of performance earn different grades. They allow assessors to give very specific feedback to students on their performance.
• when students are involved in their construction, encourage them to take responsibility for their performance
• when used for self-assessment and peer assessment, make students aware of assessment processes and procedures, enhance their meta-cognitive awareness, and improve their capacity to assess their own work
• can result in richer feedback to students, giving them a clearer idea where they sit in terms of an ordered progression towards increased expertise in a learning domain.
• by engaging staff teams in rubric-based conversations about quality, help them develop a shared language for talking about learning and assessment.
• help assessors efficiently and reliably interpret and grade students' work.
• systematically illuminate gaps and weaknesses in students' understanding against particular criteria, helping teachers target areas to address.

(Source: UNSW Sydney)