Rubrics Video Text

Rubrics can establish consistency in grading and assessment. In many disciplines, though, they require significant time and effort to develop, whether by one professor or a faculty team.

However, once faculty invest in rubrics, they can make grading much more efficient, in several ways. At the level of individual assignments, a checklist of attributes to focus on when grading avoids distraction and cuts down on fatigue. Students get standardized feedback that can head off a lot of reasonable but often repetitive questions. In fact, students these days often see rubrics in secondary education, and appreciate rubrics as guidelines to follow in learning, and a basis for fairness and clarity in grades.

At the course level, you might plan a series of assessments that are essentially the same (other than content), so rubrics are reusable.

Once an instructor has a handful of rubrics constructed, she or he will likely make improvements based on experience, for clarity and closer alignment to lesson objectives. But existing rubrics often provide structure and language to subsequent rubrics, cutting down on the time needed to build more rubrics.

Particularly in discussions, where instructor workload is a major concern, rubrics can be a big help. If students should follow the same rubric for discussion contributions, providing instruction to students, and assessing student contributions to discussions becomes much easier and quicker.