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#1 - Holistic Rubrics. These rubrics assess a student’s overall achievement on an assignment, based on predefined achievement levels. Holistic rubrics do not break the scoring down into multiple criteria. They typically provide feedback on what the learner is able to do, rather than what the learner cannot do. The pitfall of this type of rubric is the difficulty in identifying discrete areas for improvement or gaining a thorough understanding of a student’s specific content knowledge or skill level. For this reason, holistic rubrics usually work best with low-stakes assignments and when there is a need for short or summative feedback, such as class participation, progression drafts, journal assignments or portfolios, and project presentations. #2 - Analytic Rubrics. Analytic rubrics assess criteria separately, using different descriptive tags or ratings. These rubrics work well for providing feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of a student’s submission. Analytic rubrics can be time- consuming to create, and the language and criteria need to align with the assignment’s objectives. The analytic rubric usually works best for problem-solving or application assessments because the rubric has distinct categories for each component. It can consider the complexity of the task, such as discussion grading, research project and papers, design projects, and peer reviews. #3 - Single Point Rubrics. Single point rubrics break down the components of an assignment, like an analytic rubric. However, the descriptors focus on the level of proficiency. Feedback space is provided to suggest ways to improve and/or to indicate where the assignment excelled beyond the descriptors. This rubric requires more work on the part of the instructor regarding written feedback, but also gives the instructor more freedom to provide personalized feedback particularly when students veer away from assignment descriptors. Single point rubrics contain far less language than the analytic rubric and take less time to develop. #4 - Best practice: Integrate rubrics into assignments. Rubrics can often be an afterthought. To help integrate rubrics seamlessly into assignments, they should be handed out at the same time to facilitate clarity about how to succeed with the assignment. Intentional design that enables students to practice with and implement the rubrics before the assignment due date allows alignment between objectives, assignment, and rubrics to be more transparent. Training students to use rubrics and then soliciting feedback can identify strengths and weaknesses of the rubric. #5 - Best Practice: Match Course Modality to Rubric. Instructional designers understand that the online course modality influences the instructor's presence and community development throughout the course. For example, in online asynchronous modalities rubrics can build a sense of community if students are grouped together to develop their own rubrics, or if rubrics are used as a peer review tool. In online synchronous modalities rubrics are used to keep focus on criteria and content during live student or group presentations. Hybrid modalities allow rubrics such as self-assessments to be used asynchronously to develop reflection while single point rubrics are used synchronously to gauge the development of an assignment or project. #6 - Best Practice: Know the Advantages and Disadvantages. Be familiar with both the advantages and disadvantages of using a rubric. The advantage of the rubric is that it functions as an efficient means of communication and feedback between instructor and student. They reinforce the course learning objectives as the rubric criteria provides consistency and continuity for what is important along the learning trajectory. Disadvantages of rubrics may include criteria and/or a rating scale that is not aligned with the assignment and students feeling compelled to write to the rubric anyway. However, attention to rubric structure and the use of descriptive language can help keep the rubric from becoming too vague, negative, or inconsistent. Rubrics should be crafted to engage students by using supportive student-friendly language with similar syntax and wording from column to column. |
