Grading Rubrics

A good grading rubric just might be the best tool you have for grading fairly, accurately, efficiently, and in a defensible manner. On this page, you’ll learn what a rubric is and why you would want to use one. You will also consider some potential problems a rubric might have.

Overview of Rubrics

This video from Lucas Anderson takes you through the steps of building a rubric and offers some important considerations for making a good rubric.

If you don’t prefer to watch the video, here are some rubric basics.

Analytic Rubric

The most extensive form of a rubric is the analytic rubric, often presented as a grid. In this kind of rubric, you break your assignment up into parts (analysis), assign weight to each relevant part, identify different levels of competency for each part, and describe how a student might achieve each level of competency for each part. It might look like this:

Criteria	Excellent (4 pts)	Good (3 pts)	Fair (2 pts)	Poor (1 pt)
Focus	The post has a clearly defined focus and is easy to understand. The post is supported by ample analysis The post clearly answers all of the questions in the discussion prompt.	The post has an identifiable, but not obvious, focus. The post is supported by some analysis. The post addresses most, but not all, of the questions listed in the discussion prompt.	The post has the beginnings of a focus. The focus is not clearly articulated or supported by adequate analysis. The student addresses few of the questions listed in the discussion prompt.	The post shows little/no focus. The post shows little/no analysis. The student fails to address most or all of the questions and/or does not accurately answer them.
Critical Thinking	The student shows a thorough understanding of the required reading(s). The student provides two or more examples from the required reading(s) and references outside sources.	The student shows a good understanding of the material(s). The student provides one example.	The student shows a good understanding of the material. The student does not incorporate examples.	The student shows an understanding of some aspects of the required reading(s). The student incorporates no examples or irrelevant examples.
Connections	The student makes substantial and meaningful connections between the required reading(s) and his/her personal/academic experiences. The student’s analysis prompts his/her classmates to engage in further dialogue.	The student makes some connections between the required reading(s) and his/her personal/academic experiences, but some ideas are not fully developed. The student’s analysis prompts his/her classmates to engage in further dialogue.	The student makes some connections between the required reading(s) and his/her personal/academic experiences, but the connection is inadequately supported. The student’s analysis provides little opportunity for further dialogue.	The student makes substantial and meaningful connections between the required reading(s) and his/her personal/academic experiences. The student’s analysis prompts his/her classmates to engage in further dialogue.
Grammar and Mechanics	There are few grammatical or stylistic errors.	There are a couple of grammatical or stylistics errors that interfere with the readers’ ability to understand parts of the discussion post.	There are obvious grammatical or stylistic errors that interfere with the readers’ ability to understand some parts of the discussion post.	There are obvious grammatical or stylistic errors that make understanding the discussion post extremely difficult.

Note some important features of an analytic rubric

Dimensions – these are the elements of the assignment that you intend to assess. They may be discrete parts of an assignment (like the sections of a lab report), or cross-cutting elements of an assignment (like grammar or creativity).
Achievement Levels – these establish the levels of quality that can be demonstrated in the assignment. For example, you might establish that students can do Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor on any given dimension of the assignment.
Weights – the different dimensions of the assignment may be more or less important. You may weight some dimensions as worth more than other dimensions.
Descriptions – each cell, that is each intersection of dimension and achievement level, contains a description of how a student would earn that achievement level on that dimension.

Benefits of Rubrics

Using rubrics grants several advantages.

Accuracy

Rubrics can help you grade accurately. A well-designed rubric ends up expressing the goals of an assignment, and using the rubric keeps your grading focused on those goals. You are less likely to miss or mistake an important element of student work when the dimensions, achievement levels, and descriptions are arrayed before you.

Efficiency

It is usually quicker to grade with a rubric. You are likely to more quickly and automatically identify the strengths and weaknesses of a submission when the rubric is before you. Well-written descriptions in the cells can save you from writing many comments. Returning the graded rubric to your student gives them a detailed breakdown of their performance without your having to write an extensive explanatory paragraph.

Fairness

A rubric helps you grade consistently. With a rubric, you return to the same specified standards with each piece of student work. Without a rubric, there is a real risk that a moderately good paper gets graded down because you happened to read it immediately after the best paper in the class. Or that same moderately good paper gets an unwarranted boost because you happened to read it immediately after a bad paper. Sometimes you are in a good mood when you grade. Sometimes you aren’t. Sometimes you grade while hungry. None of those temporary conditions should impact your students’ grades. A rubric can help prevent such accidental situations from influencing your grading.

Defensibility

Should a student challenge or disagree with their grade, having the rubric can help you show the student clearly why they got the grade they did. Imagining a worst-case scenario, a well-designed rubric that you followed consistently can protect you against accusations of capricious grading.

Problems with Rubrics

The advantages of rubrics are many, but also be aware of potential problems. Most of the problems can be avoided, but only with care.

Rubrics are restrictive

Once you establish a rubric, you have restricted the domain within which you can grade. If you grade on something other than what you established in the rubric, that might be capricious grading. Similarly, the descriptions you put in each cell are now fixed as the descriptions of what you expect on the assignment. Rubrics also restrict the range of acceptable student performance. Once you establish a rubric, those are the rules your students will be following, and student work (even good student work) that falls outside the established parameters will be graded poorly according to the rubric.

This problem is essentially the opposite face of the benefits of fairness and defensibility. The restrictions imposed by the rubric are precisely what help you grade consistently and defensibly. It seems like the way forward would be to ensure the rubric is well-constructed. Anticipate what you want to see from students and incorporate that into the rubric. Make sure the rubric reflects your values and the standards of your discipline so that you are happy to keep within the bounds the rubric sets.

Rubrics guide your students

Some worry that a comprehensive rubric provides too much structure and description so that students don’t have to do some of the important work themselves. Again, this is the opposite face of a possible value: a rubric establishes parameters and guides students in the right direction. That is usually good, unless it goes too far. The way forward would be to identify how much planning and organizing you want to be the student’s responsibility. If you are teaching an upper-level course, you might expect students to figure out what the structure of a paper or project should be. If so, you should explicitly set that as a course objective, and then if you use a rubric be sure not to have the rubric give too much away. Instead of having separate dimensions for each section of a paper, you might have a single dimension called “structure” and the highest achievement level be that the student successfully determines an appropriate structure. On the other hand, for lower-level courses, you might not expect students to understand the structure of good work, so you use your rubric to guide them towards a good structure.

Conclusion

A good rubric establishes expectations for your students, and helps you grade quickly, efficiently, fairly, and defensibly. But make sure you construct your rubric so that you don’t feel trapped by it, and it does not do too much of the work you want students doing themselves.