The stock image from the Open Learn Create site actually provides a clear visual definition of a rubric: a rubric is a uniform template reviewers use to evaluate materials or performances for assessment purposes. Rubrics evaluate, or measure, though the application of defined criteria (which may be labeled “performance indicators”).
Rubrics are widely utilized in educational (and other) settings because they aid consistency and reliability in evaluation processes. Because they outline the standards for material production or performance, rubrics can serve as important guides for those being assessed as well as those doing the assessing.
Looking for the point(s)
Most rubrics can be categorized as either analytic or holistic. (Developmental rubrics are often given their own specific categorization/definition because these difficult-to-design instruments focus on processes, but they are actually a subset of the analytic.) For an excellent breakdown of the fundamental differences between analytic and holistic rubrics, see Jennifer Gonzalez’s post on Cult of Pedagogy.
Like any written document, rubrics can include the stylistic and semantic signatures of their author(s), and be poorly crafted or incredibly well done. Functional rubrics, though, all possess grids (even “checklist” rubrics tend to be presented in table form), defined scales or achievement levels, and clearly marked areas wherein scores or specific achievement levels are to be recorded.
The “Career Portfolio rubric” is an analytic rubric with articulated levels of performance that include their own descriptors. Our “Just the Minutes” rubric only lists baseline expectations (falling into what Jennifer Gonzalez terms a “single-point rubric”) because they have to be flexible enough to account for the creativity students will need to express when they complete something akin to meeting minutes. (Here written explanations will accompany numerical scores because the expectations for select criteria are not as clear-cut as the elements of the “Career Portfolio” are.)
We need to focus on the important point(s)
Could I work up descriptive lists that would make the “Just the Minutes” rubrics look like the “Career Portfolio” rubric? Absolutely. Would this excess description help you? Not really. Including descriptors of possible permutations would make the document overly long (and not as functional for evaluative purposes). Furthermore, a list of potential problems or errors, provided in advance of our exercise, could set negative expectations and stifle creativity.
Rubrics are incredibly useful, but they are not always the best choice for evaluation in the classroom. We can see both the strengths and potential limitations of a rubric when we consider our “Study Guide” assignment. Our evaluative instrument for that assignment outlines all the relevant criteria and defines baseline expectations, but it doesn’t include levels of expectations, even though those levels could easily be articulated. Why? Because a full articulation of levels alongside the laundry list of relevant criteria would render the form unreadable. Even with tiny font in a landscape layout, that’d be two dense pages of text! “Thoroughness” in rubrics is constrained by form (information has to be concise, precise, and able to be meaningfully presented in a list format), which is why substantive written feedback comes as an appendage or supplement to a rubric. Rubrics provide a shorthand for what should be agreed upon standards of evaluation; they are not fora for extensive feedback, nor are they an “answer key” to a particular problem, test, or assignment.
The inherent limitation of rubrics is even more evident when we consider the evaluation of argumentative expository prose. There are, of course, a range of analytic and holistic rubrics that can be used in the assessment of writing (both for grading purposes and the evaluation of curricula and programs in general), but these rubrics tend to lose their efficacy as vehicles of meaningful feedback when the level of writing increases in upper division classes. It’s one thing to give a beginning writer points for the presence of a thesis, reminders about proper mechanics, and a list of syntactical errors to avoid. It is quite another to provide that to an advanced writer who can and should be expected to independently craft a thesis, compose clear sentences, and fashion a coherent organizational principle. Such foundational elements are not discrete bits that can be considered in isolation (and apportioned points according). They are integrated components that have to work in concert with the whole for the finished draft to even merit a passing score.
This is why there is no rubric for the essay assignments in our 400-level capstone course.
This does not mean, though, that there is no guidance or help for the “Function” or “Recovering Our Senses” papers. The topic parameters are specified in the assignment sheets, and I can always look at a draft. I’m actually foregoing a rubric here so that you can receive formative feedback that offers specific suggestions for improvement!
So does all of this mean no score?
No. Carefully considering when rubrics can and should apply is not remotely close to ungrading. The final marks in our class (for individual assignments and the class as a whole) aren’t just an acknowledgement that we exist in a system that requires some level of formalized end assessment. They are actual grades, offered in a format some revolutionary educators have come to question.
And before my English ed folks come at me, telling me why I should have a rubric to justify all of my grades (because that’s how you’ve been trained–rubrics are the lifeblood in COE), consider this: did you find the absence of a rubric for the Objective Test as surprising or as potentially problematic as the absence of a rubric for your papers? No, you didn’t–and that’s because the objective test gives you a score. Objective test scores, like other evidence of educational performance, can be meaningfully assessed via rubrics, but that meaningful assessment doesn’t get at what the educational system has trained students to care about most–a grade. This training is why so many of us can earnestly claim we desperately need the breakdown of a rubric when what we really want is a schematic pathway for grabbing the most points we can to get the grade we desire.
And, to take us back to the vocational emphasis of this course, we should remember that it is in our best professional interest to seek comprehensive evaluations outside of narrowly conceived rubrics. No English degree automatically prepares its recipient for a set occupation. Those of us in the teaching area still have to get certified to actually teach, which means that even a B.A. in English ed from MSU does not completely fulfill (or comprise?) a particular vocational track.
As English majors, we can and should learn how to navigate a world that prizes checked boxes over critical thought, but we can only succeed in that world if we creatively focus on our full employment potential. We won’t be able to showcase that potential if we uncritically subscribe to numerical scores and consider checked boxes our (great?) expectation(s).
(So don’t have sick fancies that you want to see more rubrics. Those cloistered approximations of fair play will eventually burn you.)
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