rubric for homework completion

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

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Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
May removes a focus on the grade/points
May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
Brainstorm and discuss with students
Can they be observed and measured?
Are they important and essential?
Are they distinct from other criteria?
Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
Revise the criteria as needed
Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

Describe observable and measurable behavior
Use parallel language across the scale
Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

	Above Average (4)	Sufficient (3)	Developing (2)	Needs improvement (1)
(Thesis supported by relevant information and ideas	The central purpose of the student work is clear and supporting ideas always are always well-focused. Details are relevant, enrich the work.	The central purpose of the student work is clear and ideas are almost always focused in a way that supports the thesis. Relevant details illustrate the author’s ideas.	The central purpose of the student work is identified. Ideas are mostly focused in a way that supports the thesis.	The purpose of the student work is not well-defined. A number of central ideas do not support the thesis. Thoughts appear disconnected.
(Sequencing of elements/ ideas)	Information and ideas are presented in a logical sequence which flows naturally and is engaging to the audience.	Information and ideas are presented in a logical sequence which is followed by the reader with little or no difficulty.	Information and ideas are presented in an order that the audience can mostly follow.	Information and ideas are poorly sequenced. The audience has difficulty following the thread of thought.
(Correctness of grammar and spelling)	Minimal to no distracting errors in grammar and spelling.	The readability of the work is only slightly interrupted by spelling and/or grammatical errors.	Grammatical and/or spelling errors distract from the work.	The readability of the work is seriously hampered by spelling and/or grammatical errors.

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper

The audience is able to easily identify the central message of the work and is engaged by the paper’s clear focus and relevant details. Information is presented logically and naturally. There are minimal to no distracting errors in grammar and spelling. : The audience is easily able to identify the focus of the student work which is supported by relevant ideas and supporting details. Information is presented in a logical manner that is easily followed. The readability of the work is only slightly interrupted by errors. : The audience can identify the central purpose of the student work without little difficulty and supporting ideas are present and clear. The information is presented in an orderly fashion that can be followed with little difficulty. Grammatical and spelling errors distract from the work. : The audience cannot clearly or easily identify the central ideas or purpose of the student work. Information is presented in a disorganized fashion causing the audience to have difficulty following the author’s ideas. The readability of the work is seriously hampered by errors.

Single-Point Rubric

Advanced (evidence of exceeding standards)	Criteria described a proficient level	Concerns (things that need work)
	Criteria #1: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
	Criteria #2: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
	Criteria #3: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
	Criteria #4: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
90-100 points	80-90 points	<80 points

More examples:

Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
A Rubric for Rubrics
Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
Math Proof Assessment Rubric
Kansas State Sample Rubrics
Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

Moodle Docs: Rubrics
Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

Google Assignments
Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from
Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

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15 Helpful Scoring Rubric Examples for All Grades and Subjects

In the end, they actually make grading easier.

Collage of scoring rubric examples including written response rubric and interactive notebook rubric

When it comes to student assessment and evaluation, there are a lot of methods to consider. In some cases, testing is the best way to assess a student’s knowledge, and the answers are either right or wrong. But often, assessing a student’s performance is much less clear-cut. In these situations, a scoring rubric is often the way to go, especially if you’re using standards-based grading . Here’s what you need to know about this useful tool, along with lots of rubric examples to get you started.

What is a scoring rubric?

In the United States, a rubric is a guide that lays out the performance expectations for an assignment. It helps students understand what’s required of them, and guides teachers through the evaluation process. (Note that in other countries, the term “rubric” may instead refer to the set of instructions at the beginning of an exam. To avoid confusion, some people use the term “scoring rubric” instead.)

A rubric generally has three parts:

Performance criteria: These are the various aspects on which the assignment will be evaluated. They should align with the desired learning outcomes for the assignment.
Rating scale: This could be a number system (often 1 to 4) or words like “exceeds expectations, meets expectations, below expectations,” etc.
Indicators: These describe the qualities needed to earn a specific rating for each of the performance criteria. The level of detail may vary depending on the assignment and the purpose of the rubric itself.

Rubrics take more time to develop up front, but they help ensure more consistent assessment, especially when the skills being assessed are more subjective. A well-developed rubric can actually save teachers a lot of time when it comes to grading. What’s more, sharing your scoring rubric with students in advance often helps improve performance . This way, students have a clear picture of what’s expected of them and what they need to do to achieve a specific grade or performance rating.

Learn more about why and how to use a rubric here.

Types of Rubric

There are three basic rubric categories, each with its own purpose.

Holistic Rubric

A holistic scoring rubric laying out the criteria for a rating of 1 to 4 when creating an infographic

Source: Cambrian College

This type of rubric combines all the scoring criteria in a single scale. They’re quick to create and use, but they have drawbacks. If a student’s work spans different levels, it can be difficult to decide which score to assign. They also make it harder to provide feedback on specific aspects.

Traditional letter grades are a type of holistic rubric. So are the popular “hamburger rubric” and “ cupcake rubric ” examples. Learn more about holistic rubrics here.

Analytic Rubric

Layout of an analytic scoring rubric, describing the different sections like criteria, rating, and indicators

Source: University of Nebraska

Analytic rubrics are much more complex and generally take a great deal more time up front to design. They include specific details of the expected learning outcomes, and descriptions of what criteria are required to meet various performance ratings in each. Each rating is assigned a point value, and the total number of points earned determines the overall grade for the assignment.

Though they’re more time-intensive to create, analytic rubrics actually save time while grading. Teachers can simply circle or highlight any relevant phrases in each rating, and add a comment or two if needed. They also help ensure consistency in grading, and make it much easier for students to understand what’s expected of them.

Learn more about analytic rubrics here.

Developmental Rubric

Source: Deb’s Data Digest

A developmental rubric is a type of analytic rubric, but it’s used to assess progress along the way rather than determining a final score on an assignment. The details in these rubrics help students understand their achievements, as well as highlight the specific skills they still need to improve.

Developmental rubrics are essentially a subset of analytic rubrics. They leave off the point values, though, and focus instead on giving feedback using the criteria and indicators of performance.

Learn how to use developmental rubrics here.

Ready to create your own rubrics? Find general tips on designing rubrics here. Then, check out these examples across all grades and subjects to inspire you.

Elementary School Rubric Examples

These elementary school rubric examples come from real teachers who use them with their students. Adapt them to fit your needs and grade level.

Reading Fluency Rubric

A developmental rubric example for reading fluency

You can use this one as an analytic rubric by counting up points to earn a final score, or just to provide developmental feedback. There’s a second rubric page available specifically to assess prosody (reading with expression).

Learn more: Teacher Thrive

Reading Comprehension Rubric

The nice thing about this rubric is that you can use it at any grade level, for any text. If you like this style, you can get a reading fluency rubric here too.

Learn more: Pawprints Resource Center

Written Response Rubric

Rubrics aren’t just for huge projects. They can also help kids work on very specific skills, like this one for improving written responses on assessments.

Learn more: Dianna Radcliffe: Teaching Upper Elementary and More

Interactive Notebook Rubric

If you use interactive notebooks as a learning tool , this rubric can help kids stay on track and meet your expectations.

Learn more: Classroom Nook

Project Rubric

Rubric that can be used for assessing any elementary school project

Use this simple rubric as it is, or tweak it to include more specific indicators for the project you have in mind.

Learn more: Tales of a Title One Teacher

Behavior Rubric

Rubric for assessing student behavior in school and classroom

Developmental rubrics are perfect for assessing behavior and helping students identify opportunities for improvement. Send these home regularly to keep parents in the loop.

Learn more: Teachers.net Gazette

Middle School Rubric Examples

In middle school, use rubrics to offer detailed feedback on projects, presentations, and more. Be sure to share them with students in advance, and encourage them to use them as they work so they’ll know if they’re meeting expectations.

Argumentative Writing Rubric

An argumentative rubric example to use with middle school students

Argumentative writing is a part of language arts, social studies, science, and more. That makes this rubric especially useful.

Learn more: Dr. Caitlyn Tucker

Role-Play Rubric

A rubric example for assessing student role play in the classroom

Role-plays can be really useful when teaching social and critical thinking skills, but it’s hard to assess them. Try a rubric like this one to evaluate and provide useful feedback.

Learn more: A Question of Influence

Art Project Rubric

A rubric used to grade middle school art projects

Art is one of those subjects where grading can feel very subjective. Bring some objectivity to the process with a rubric like this.

Source: Art Ed Guru

Diorama Project Rubric

A rubric for grading middle school diorama projects

You can use diorama projects in almost any subject, and they’re a great chance to encourage creativity. Simplify the grading process and help kids know how to make their projects shine with this scoring rubric.

Learn more: Historyourstory.com

Oral Presentation Rubric

Rubric example for grading oral presentations given by middle school students

Rubrics are terrific for grading presentations, since you can include a variety of skills and other criteria. Consider letting students use a rubric like this to offer peer feedback too.

Learn more: Bright Hub Education

High School Rubric Examples

In high school, it’s important to include your grading rubrics when you give assignments like presentations, research projects, or essays. Kids who go on to college will definitely encounter rubrics, so helping them become familiar with them now will help in the future.

Presentation Rubric

Example of a rubric used to grade a high school project presentation

Analyze a student’s presentation both for content and communication skills with a rubric like this one. If needed, create a separate one for content knowledge with even more criteria and indicators.

Learn more: Michael A. Pena Jr.

Debate Rubric

A rubric for assessing a student's performance in a high school debate

Debate is a valuable learning tool that encourages critical thinking and oral communication skills. This rubric can help you assess those skills objectively.

Learn more: Education World

Project-Based Learning Rubric

A rubric for assessing high school project based learning assignments

Implementing project-based learning can be time-intensive, but the payoffs are worth it. Try this rubric to make student expectations clear and end-of-project assessment easier.

Learn more: Free Technology for Teachers

100-Point Essay Rubric

Rubric for scoring an essay with a final score out of 100 points

Need an easy way to convert a scoring rubric to a letter grade? This example for essay writing earns students a final score out of 100 points.

Learn more: Learn for Your Life

Drama Performance Rubric

A rubric teachers can use to evaluate a student's participation and performance in a theater production

If you’re unsure how to grade a student’s participation and performance in drama class, consider this example. It offers lots of objective criteria and indicators to evaluate.

Learn more: Chase March

How do you use rubrics in your classroom? Come share your thoughts and exchange ideas in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, 25 of the best alternative assessment ideas ..

Scoring rubrics help establish expectations and ensure assessment consistency. Use these rubric examples to help you design your own.

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Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating and using rubrics.

A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly describes the instructor’s performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric identifies:

criteria: the aspects of performance (e.g., argument, evidence, clarity) that will be assessed
descriptors: the characteristics associated with each dimension (e.g., argument is demonstrable and original, evidence is diverse and compelling)
performance levels: a rating scale that identifies students’ level of mastery within each criterion

Rubrics can be used to provide feedback to students on diverse types of assignments, from papers, projects, and oral presentations to artistic performances and group projects.

Benefitting from Rubrics

reduce the time spent grading by allowing instructors to refer to a substantive description without writing long comments
help instructors more clearly identify strengths and weaknesses across an entire class and adjust their instruction appropriately
help to ensure consistency across time and across graders
reduce the uncertainty which can accompany grading
discourage complaints about grades
understand instructors’ expectations and standards
use instructor feedback to improve their performance
monitor and assess their progress as they work towards clearly indicated goals
recognize their strengths and weaknesses and direct their efforts accordingly

Examples of Rubrics

Here we are providing a sample set of rubrics designed by faculty at Carnegie Mellon and other institutions. Although your particular field of study or type of assessment may not be represented, viewing a rubric that is designed for a similar assessment may give you ideas for the kinds of criteria, descriptions, and performance levels you use on your own rubric.

Example 1: Philosophy Paper This rubric was designed for student papers in a range of courses in philosophy (Carnegie Mellon).
Example 2: Psychology Assignment Short, concept application homework assignment in cognitive psychology (Carnegie Mellon).
Example 3: Anthropology Writing Assignments This rubric was designed for a series of short writing assignments in anthropology (Carnegie Mellon).
Example 4: History Research Paper . This rubric was designed for essays and research papers in history (Carnegie Mellon).
Example 1: Capstone Project in Design This rubric describes the components and standards of performance from the research phase to the final presentation for a senior capstone project in design (Carnegie Mellon).
Example 2: Engineering Design Project This rubric describes performance standards for three aspects of a team project: research and design, communication, and team work.

Oral Presentations

Example 1: Oral Exam This rubric describes a set of components and standards for assessing performance on an oral exam in an upper-division course in history (Carnegie Mellon).
Example 2: Oral Communication This rubric is adapted from Huba and Freed, 2000.
Example 3: Group Presentations This rubric describes a set of components and standards for assessing group presentations in history (Carnegie Mellon).

Class Participation/Contributions

Example 1: Discussion Class This rubric assesses the quality of student contributions to class discussions. This is appropriate for an undergraduate-level course (Carnegie Mellon).
Example 2: Advanced Seminar This rubric is designed for assessing discussion performance in an advanced undergraduate or graduate seminar.

See also " Examples and Tools " section of this site for more rubrics.

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How to Use Rubrics

A rubric is a document that describes the criteria by which students’ assignments are graded. Rubrics can be helpful for:

Making grading faster and more consistent (reducing potential bias).
Communicating your expectations for an assignment to students before they begin.

Moreover, for assignments whose criteria are more subjective, the process of creating a rubric and articulating what it looks like to succeed at an assignment provides an opportunity to check for alignment with the intended learning outcomes and modify the assignment prompt, as needed.

Why rubrics?

Rubrics are best for assignments or projects that require evaluation on multiple dimensions. Creating a rubric makes the instructor’s standards explicit to both students and other teaching staff for the class, showing students how to meet expectations.

Additionally, the more comprehensive a rubric is, the more it allows for grading to be streamlined—students will get informative feedback about their performance from the rubric, even if they don’t have as many individualized comments. Grading can be more standardized and efficient across graders.

Finally, rubrics allow for reflection, as the instructor has to think about their standards and outcomes for the students. Using rubrics can help with self-directed learning in students as well, especially if rubrics are used to review students’ own work or their peers’, or if students are involved in creating the rubric.

How to design a rubric

1. consider the desired learning outcomes.

What learning outcomes is this assignment reinforcing and assessing? If the learning outcome seems “fuzzy,” iterate on the outcome by thinking about the expected student work product. This may help you more clearly articulate the learning outcome in a way that is measurable.

2. Define criteria

What does a successful assignment submission look like? As described by Allen and Tanner (2006), it can help develop an initial list of categories that the student should demonstrate proficiency in by completing the assignment. These categories should correlate with the intended learning outcomes you identified in Step 1, although they may be more granular in some cases. For example, if the task assesses students’ ability to formulate an effective communication strategy, what components of their communication strategy will you be looking for? Talking with colleagues or looking at existing rubrics for similar tasks may give you ideas for categories to consider for evaluation.

If you have assigned this task to students before and have samples of student work, it can help create a qualitative observation guide. This is described in Linda Suskie’s book Assessing Student Learning , where she suggests thinking about what made you decide to give one assignment an A and another a C, as well as taking notes when grading assignments and looking for common patterns. The often repeated themes that you comment on may show what your goals and expectations for students are. An example of an observation guide used to take notes on predetermined areas of an assignment is shown here .

In summary, consider the following list of questions when defining criteria for a rubric (O’Reilly and Cyr, 2006):

What do you want students to learn from the task?
How will students demonstrate that they have learned?
What knowledge, skills, and behaviors are required for the task?
What steps are required for the task?
What are the characteristics of the final product?

After developing an initial list of criteria, prioritize the most important skills you want to target and eliminate unessential criteria or combine similar skills into one group. Most rubrics have between 3 and 8 criteria. Rubrics that are too lengthy make it difficult to grade and challenging for students to understand the key skills they need to achieve for the given assignment.

3. Create the rating scale

According to Suskie, you will want at least 3 performance levels: for adequate and inadequate performance, at the minimum, and an exemplary level to motivate students to strive for even better work. Rubrics often contain 5 levels, with an additional level between adequate and exemplary and a level between adequate and inadequate. Usually, no more than 5 levels are needed, as having too many rating levels can make it hard to consistently distinguish which rating to give an assignment (such as between a 6 or 7 out of 10). Suskie also suggests labeling each level with names to clarify which level represents the minimum acceptable performance. Labels will vary by assignment and subject, but some examples are:

Exceeds standard, meets standard, approaching standard, below standard
Complete evidence, partial evidence, minimal evidence, no evidence

4. Fill in descriptors

Fill in descriptors for each criterion at each performance level. Expand on the list of criteria you developed in Step 2. Begin to write full descriptions, thinking about what an exemplary example would look like for students to strive towards. Avoid vague terms like “good” and make sure to use explicit, concrete terms to describe what would make a criterion good. For instance, a criterion called “organization and structure” would be more descriptive than “writing quality.” Describe measurable behavior and use parallel language for clarity; the wording for each criterion should be very similar, except for the degree to which standards are met. For example, in a sample rubric from Chapter 9 of Suskie’s book, the criterion of “persuasiveness” has the following descriptors:

Well Done (5): Motivating questions and advance organizers convey the main idea. Information is accurate.
Satisfactory (3-4): Includes persuasive information.
Needs Improvement (1-2): Include persuasive information with few facts.
Incomplete (0): Information is incomplete, out of date, or incorrect.

These sample descriptors generally have the same sentence structure that provides consistent language across performance levels and shows the degree to which each standard is met.

5. Test your rubric

Test your rubric using a range of student work to see if the rubric is realistic. You may also consider leaving room for aspects of the assignment, such as effort, originality, and creativity, to encourage students to go beyond the rubric. If there will be multiple instructors grading, it is important to calibrate the scoring by having all graders use the rubric to grade a selected set of student work and then discuss any differences in the scores. This process helps develop consistency in grading and making the grading more valid and reliable.

Types of Rubrics

If you would like to dive deeper into rubric terminology, this section is dedicated to discussing some of the different types of rubrics. However, regardless of the type of rubric you use, it’s still most important to focus first on your learning goals and think about how the rubric will help clarify students’ expectations and measure student progress towards those learning goals.

Depending on the nature of the assignment, rubrics can come in several varieties (Suskie, 2009):

Checklist Rubric

This is the simplest kind of rubric, which lists specific features or aspects of the assignment which may be present or absent. A checklist rubric does not involve the creation of a rating scale with descriptors. See example from 18.821 project-based math class .

Rating Scale Rubric

This is like a checklist rubric, but instead of merely noting the presence or absence of a feature or aspect of the assignment, the grader also rates quality (often on a graded or Likert-style scale). See example from 6.811 assistive technology class .

Descriptive Rubric

A descriptive rubric is like a rating scale, but including descriptions of what performing to a certain level on each scale looks like. Descriptive rubrics are particularly useful in communicating instructors’ expectations of performance to students and in creating consistency with multiple graders on an assignment. This kind of rubric is probably what most people think of when they imagine a rubric. See example from 15.279 communications class .

Holistic Scoring Guide

Unlike the first 3 types of rubrics, a holistic scoring guide describes performance at different levels (e.g., A-level performance, B-level performance) holistically without analyzing the assignment into several different scales. This kind of rubric is particularly useful when there are many assignments to grade and a moderate to a high degree of subjectivity in the assessment of quality. It can be difficult to have consistency across scores, and holistic scoring guides are most helpful when making decisions quickly rather than providing detailed feedback to students. See example from 11.229 advanced writing seminar .

The kind of rubric that is most appropriate will depend on the assignment in question.

Implementation tips

Rubrics are also available to use for Canvas assignments. See this resource from Boston College for more details and guides from Canvas Instructure.

Allen, D., & Tanner, K. (2006). Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 5 (3), 197-203. doi:10.1187/cbe.06-06-0168

Cherie Miot Abbanat. 11.229 Advanced Writing Seminar. Spring 2004. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Haynes Miller, Nat Stapleton, Saul Glasman, and Susan Ruff. 18.821 Project Laboratory in Mathematics. Spring 2013. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Lori Breslow, and Terence Heagney. 15.279 Management Communication for Undergraduates. Fall 2012. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

O’Reilly, L., & Cyr, T. (2006). Creating a Rubric: An Online Tutorial for Faculty. Retrieved from https://www.ucdenver.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/center-for-faculty-development/Documents/Tutorials/Rubrics/index.htm

Suskie, L. (2009). Using a scoring guide or rubric to plan and evaluate an assessment. In Assessing student learning: A common sense guide (2nd edition, pp. 137-154 ) . Jossey-Bass.

William Li, Grace Teo, and Robert Miller. 6.811 Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology. Fall 2014. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

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iRubric: Homework Completion Rubric

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HOMEWORK COMPLETION Descriptions

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How to Grade Homework with a Rubric

Grading assignments and keeping track of students' homework is a part of a teacher's life. It's also the least favorite part as it takes up a lot of time to go through each student's assignment and grade them without any biases. That's where rubrics come in handy.

How to Design Rubrics for Assignment Evaluation

Designing rubrics for assignment evaluation can be time-consuming. But this one-time effort can save you hours in the days to come. For creating a comprehensive rubric, you must set the criteria on which you'll be grading students' homework. You can include the following areas in your rubric:

Grading Criteria

Grading criteria are the aspects of the homework you'll be giving scores for. It may include neatness, accuracy, completion of tasks, quality, etc.

Learning Objectives

The first column must be of defined learning objectives. Clear and precise objectives will guide you in checking the accuracy of the assignment. Learning objectives also aid you in deciding the criteria for grading.

Grading Scale

The first row should consist of the scale you'll be using to grade the assignment. Are you using a range of 1-5, with one being the least amount of scores and five being the highest? Whatever grading scale you decide, the next step of defining characteristics would be based on that.

Criteria Characteristics

Now that you've decided on a grading scale, you must develop the characteristics you'd look for to award or deduct scores. For instance, if a student has given all the accurate information regarding the topic, they can get the highest score for the criterion of accuracy. These characteristics will aid you in comparing students' work with the rubric and make grading easy. Whichever cell of characteristics is compatible with students' work, award the score of that cell's row.

Basic Requirements

These are the basic information filled for individual students. This information includes the student's name, date of submission, number of pages, etc. Basic requirements will help you keep track of each student's assignment.

Why Should You Use Rubrics for Grading Assignments?

Knowing how to grade using a rubric is imperative for teachers to make this tedious task of going through assignments and scoring them efficient but error-free.

Efficient Grading

Grading numerous homework and paying attention to every individual's work is a time-consuming task. Using rubrics helps you do this task efficiently as you have criteria preset, and now you can grade your students' work by comparing it against the rubric.

Fair Assessment

A rubric gives you the means to fairly assess each of your students' tasks. Grading a bunch of assignments at a time can give room for errors and biases but comparing each assignment to the rubric assists you in reducing the chance of such errors. If the desired characteristics are present in a child's homework, you award the scores; if not, you deduct.

Rubrics effectively enable teachers to assess students' homework papers more quickly and accurately while reducing bias. It provides a list of criteria that students have to follow.

Developing rubrics for assignment evaluation can be time-consuming but also rewarding. Tailor an online rubric template or follow the guidelines above to design a rubric from scratch and grade away homework effortlessly.

Homework Completion Rubric

This rubric will be used to grade homework for a completion grade. Late homework may be accepted by the end of the next school day (3:29 PM) , but two points will be deducted from the score obtained using the rubric below. Please note that the next school may occur on a day the class does not meet. Homework that is turned in after the end of the next school day will not be accepted. Students may lose the privilege of turning in late work, if it becomes habitual.

Characteristics

Homework completed in pencil.
All original problems (or key information from word problems) have been copied from the book or worksheet where required.
All problems have been completed with appropriate work shown.
Work is neat and organized.
Homework contained appropriate headings.
Graphs were done on graph paper.
Most original problems (or key information from word problems) have been copied from the book or worksheet where required.
Most problems have been completed with appropriate work shown.
Assignment is neat and organized.
Assignment contains appropriate headings.
Some original problems (or key information from word problems) have been copied from the book or worksheet where required.
Some problems have been completed with appropriate work shown, but all have been attempted.
Assignment lacks neatness or clarity.
Assignment lacks appropriate heading.
Only some steps were shown.

Needs Improvement

Some problems have been attempted with some work shown, but other problems have been left blank.
Work is disorganized and hard to read.
Answers are not supported by appropriate work.

Unsatisfactory

Few problems have been attempted.
No work to support answers.
Completing an assignment “in your head” without written documentation of your process to arrive at an answer.

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Grading homework problems on completion vs. correctness, and overall grading

I taught Calculus 2 at my institution the past two semesters and several students have left comments in their course evaluations that advocate grading homework problems based on whether they were completed, not whether they were correct. For instance, when asked, "What changes to the course would you recommend?", one student wrote:

grade homework on completeness and not correctness because we are putting in the effort even if we don't necessarily understand it yet

I think they have a good point here. I view homework as required practice of the course material. Furthermore, I've realized that grading every problem carefully for correctness is prohibitively time-consuming for me!

I would like to implement a new grading scheme next year wherein homework problems will be assigned and I will give a grade based on whether they were done, and add some helpful comments about what students should work on. Ideally, everyone will get just about full credit on this component of their grade. (Perhaps someone will skip an assignment during a busy week, but if someone actually puts in effort, they will get credit.)

However, I'm not sure how to synthesize this new idea with the overall grading scheme. Previously, I made homework assignments were 15-20% of a student's final grade. It feels strange, though, to essentially make this a "gimme" portion of their grade just for doing the problems. But if I lower this to 10%, what should I do ... Have another in-class exam? That eats up class meeting time. Have regular quizzes? That also takes up some time, and should I grade those carefully on correctness, even though the students are not used to that? Should I have a once-a-month "take home exam" that amounts to being a difficult homework assignment of sorts?

Essentially, my question boils down to this: I fully intend to take these students' suggestion and assign regular homework problems to be graded solely on completion, and not correctness. I am curious about how to modify the rest of my grading scheme so that the students' final grades are still accurate and fair, and without too much extra class time taken away.

I am interested in personal suggestions/anecdotes here, as well as any education research (if there is any). I am particularly interested if you have made a similar change and can explain some observed differences in the two schemes.

(Note: There is a great answer here to the question, "Is it worth grading calculus homework?". My question is not the same; I have already decided to implement this "grade for completion and add suggestive comments" method, partly based on that answer I linked to. I am curious about adjusting other components of the course to account for this decision.)

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4 $\begingroup$ I would find it unacceptable to give a 100% mark to a solution which is incorrect. An utter gibberish submission should get a lower score independent of students efforts. Where's the line between hard work with errors and lorem ipsum with a note "I don't understand it"? If you distinguish between these two, then you do include correctness in your grading. $\endgroup$ – dtldarek Commented Jun 5, 2014 at 22:53
2 $\begingroup$ @dtldarek: I would consider gibberish to be equivalent to a non-submission. I won't just be reading to see that they wrote something but rather that they wrote something relevant . $\endgroup$ – Brendan W. Sullivan Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 2:12
2 $\begingroup$ If you do not assign grades based on correctness, then this necessarily makes your grades less accurate and fair as measures of performance in the class. I think a better way to address the student's objection would be note that effort will be correlated with correctness, so it will be rewarded even if grading is based on correctness rather than effort. $\endgroup$ – Trevor Wilson Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 6:31
1 $\begingroup$ @TrevorWilson: That's circular---it assumes that how correct their answers are on the homework is part of their performance. One could instead decide that homework correctness isn't meaningful (it may reflect people who learn quickly rather than people who ultimately learn the mateiral), and that performance on the class means how much they can do on exams or other assignments which come later when they've had more time to absorb the material. $\endgroup$ – Henry Towsner Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 14:05

4 Answers 4

There's a compromise between "correctness" and "completion" called "Standards-based grading". Here's a few links about it with various people who have tried using it for Calculus: http://blogs.cofc.edu/owensks/2014/01/08/sbg-calculus2/ , http://alwaysformative.blogspot.com/p/standards-based-grading-implementation.html , http://speced.fivetowns.net/lcs/content/Standards%20Based.pdf , http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/fie/2012/1353/00/06462211-abs.html

You can implement it in a variety of ways, but the general idea is that associate all problems you give in the course with one or more "standard(s)" that you expect students who pass to achieve, and you give students (effectively) infinite attempts to "pass" each standard. In general, this means that, for students who don't need the extra practice, they can do very few problems, but for the students who need significant practice, they can keep on trying until they're solid.

Often, courses that use SBG do it on exams too, but you could probably only do it on the homework if you wanted. And you can still give students significant credit for attempting the problems, but this way, still making the homework a "gimme"--they still have to try, but only until they get it.

One clear concern here is the overhead of keeping all this information (since you now need to record which standards students are passing, possibly review more [but smaller!] batches of hw, etc.). In general, I think the benefits outweigh the extra overhead though, particularly, because there should be (a) fewer grading overall and (b) more significant learning overall.

My standard breakdown for calculus courses is:

10% total for homework outside of class (on a 0,1,2 scale: 0 means they didn't turn it in, 1 means they turned in a partially complete assignment and 2 means they turned in a complete one)
15% total for two or three (depending on the size of the class) problem presentations on which I call pairs of students randomly to present a homework and they are given a few "I didn't get that one" kind of chances during the course of the semester
15% for each of three midterms that are 90% based on homework or simple extensions of the homework and whose remaining 10% are somewhat different that what they've seen (e.g., more theoretical, repeated application of the same method)
30% for a final exam

In the end, with this kind of break down, the median grade for a typical calculus course of mine is a B-, which is where my department would like it to be.

$\begingroup$ How many students are in your course, on average? How do you assess/keep track of these "problem presentations"? $\endgroup$ – Brendan W. Sullivan Commented Jun 5, 2014 at 19:14
1 $\begingroup$ Each section of calculus where I am has between 20 and 30 students. I assess the presentations using a rubric that they know about beforehand, part of which is peer evaluation (I hand out index cards and ask the students in the audience to answer three standard questions for each pair which then goes into the evaluation of the pair -- this could be done more quickly if you used clickers). You might think: this is so much work. But the homework is done via WebWork, so I've essentially replaced homework grading with presentation grading. $\endgroup$ – ncr Commented Jun 5, 2014 at 19:22
1 $\begingroup$ @ncr call on students randomly with or without replacement? I can see major pitfalls to both. With replacement - some students are never called on, without replacement - previously called on students stop working. $\endgroup$ – WetlabStudent Commented Jun 11, 2014 at 17:01
$\begingroup$ @ncr I created a new question for this, that you can see here matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/2651/… $\endgroup$ – WetlabStudent Commented Jun 11, 2014 at 17:39

You should ask yourself what the homework is for (check they do work, check they can do the problems correctly, ...), and grade according to that.

In my Discrete Math class I give many (some 6 to 8) homework problems, which check if they know how to work carefully on problems related to what is seen in class. This is 30% of the grade. With the TAs, we select 3 problems each week. One is to be solved by the TA, asking for input from the class; one is solved by the class, perhaps asking the TA for guidance; and one is solved individually, graded as turned in or not. This is 5%. And a midterm (30%) and a final (35%).

In homework they have time, and can consult external sources and use whatever tools they want, grading is according to work done carefully and completely. What I want is that they understand what they turn in, even if they got it off MSE, so a "random" selection of students get their grade from explaining to the TA what they turned in, not by grading what was turned in. The sessions with the TAs are geared towards not having them cram the day before the exams (which has shown time and again leads to a masacre), the exams are meant so see if they understand the material (apply it in situations at most mildly ouside what was seen in class/homework, do not ask for careful development but e.g. just explain how to set up or solve a problem, or why something is done a specific way).

I've had professors do a hybrid approach. A small set of problems would be graded and returned with detailed comments on errors. This was to help us know if we were understanding the material well enough for the exams.

A larger set of problems would be turned in and graded mainly on completeness. This was to encourage a lot of practice, which, despite everyone's best intentions, just doesn't happen unless the work has to be turned in. We knew in advance which set was which, and we received solutions after-the-fact for both sets.

To answer your main question, homework was still 15-20% of the grade. Each graded answer was a larger portion, but I didn't hear any of my fellow students complain about that. (Although, perhaps the ones who didn't do well on the homework didn't have the math skills to figure that out. evil grin )

$\begingroup$ In a class I took we had weekly homework. Four questions, only one was graded (announced on turn-in), all solutions where published. Cuts down on grading, but requires equally hard/interesting problems. $\endgroup$ – vonbrand Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 11:27

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iRubric: Consistent Work Completion and Submission rubric