Rubrics for graded assessment

Ross Woods, 2018, '22

The purpose of this paper is to give guidelines for graded assessment rubrics in postsecondary education.

In graded assessment, student work is given an assessment result such as A, B, C, D, and E. Rubrics can be used to differentiate between levels of performance required for different grades. A rubric is a set of specific criteria so that student work can be assessed more objectively, consistently, and easily. Rubrics for graded assessment give separate criteria for each grade and are often presented in table formats.

When is it most needed?

Competency-based assessment can limit the amount of learning available to that described in the competency statement, especially at low levels. In higher levels, however, it is important to ensure such limits are removed, so that the grading system can reward creativity, initiative, and performance beyond the minimum passing standard. This is especially the case when grades are essential to selection of students to continue to higher qualifications.

When is it unsuitable?

Graded assessment is not equally suitable for all units. Units are best assessed as Competent/ Not yet competent if they refer to competencies that are either you can do it or you can’t. Either way, all students in the institution should be assessed in the same way for a unit. If it is graded, then all should be graded. If it is pass/fail, then all should be pass/fail.

Some assessments have a sudden death factor, also known as a fatal flaw. If students get something essential wrong, they must be be given a grade of D nor E, no matter how well they do everything else in the assessment. This is different from a minor error made by a competent student who still has room for improvement. Here are a few examples:

1. If you break the law only once in a driving test, you've failed the test.
2. If a student plagiarizes or uses fictitious data in an assignment, they fail the assessment.
3. If a student's essay is built on a major contradiction or fallacy, you can't give it a passing grade. In this case, a major contradiction or fallacy is different from a minor error that does not affect the conclusion.
4. If a student acts dangerously in a real workplace during an assessment, he/she has already failed the assessment. You may even need to stop it. In this last case, acts dangerously is different from having a minor risk that does not seriously compromise safety.

What grades?

For the purposes of this paper, grades follow undergraduate norms as follows:

In many assessment systems, these may be modified with plus or minus, resulting in the grades A, A –, B +, B, B –, C +, C, C –. (Some systems have A as the highest possible grade, while others include a grade of A +.)

Two particular grades have critical roles:

• C – is the minimum passing requirement for undergraduates. Students who do not achieve C – have failed the unit and will need to repeat it if is compulsory and they want to graduate. This has several ramifications:
1. Students will have to pay tuition fees to repeat the unit. This will probably delay graduation and increase the risk of dropout.
2. Repeat units bring scheduling difficulties. When will the unit be offered again? Will it break up the cohort? If the cohort breaks up, will it be much more expensive to provide the unit to catch-up students?
• An average of B is required to continue to the next highest qualification. Students who do not achieve grades of B might find themselves unable to continue.

Good practice: Competency based assessment and grading

1. Students must achieve the minimum requirement for all unit requirements to gain a grade of C – or above. That is, high achievement in some requirements cannot compensate for inadequate performance in others.
2. Graded assessments are subject to the same validation (moderation) and appeal procedures as non-graded assessment.
3. Like any assessment, the reasons for the grade should be documented.
4. It is not good practice to cluster units, assess them together, and give one assessment result for the whole cluster. Each unit should be given a separate grade because levels of performance might differ between units.
5. Grading in competency-based assessment has no business with some assessment practices:
1. taking marks off for errors and giving extra marks for very good work.
2. percentages, which are arbitrary conventions, although they may be mapped to assessment grades.
6. Students are entitled to the disclosure of assessment standards. If students are given rubrics, they can plan their work to achieve at higher levels.

Methods of writing rubrics

1. Collate existing assessment comments.
If assessors have given reasons for their assessment decisions as they go, it is a matter of collating those comments into one document and editing it into a consistent document. This uses criteria that have actually been actually applied. If assessors use a Learning Management System, the software can assemble those assessment comments. If assessors keep individual manual records, the act of collation must also be manual.

2. Build a rubric as you go.
In this approach, assessors keep notes of factors affecting grades when they make assessments and validate (or moderate) assessments. It is most useful if assessors record assessment decisions of borderline cases, and list the reasons for giving the assessment result that they did. Rubric writers can write as they go in several ways:
• Put them into a structured document as they go.
• Annually collate them and issue (or update) a rubric document.
• Collaborate with other assessors to collate notes and annually issue (or update) a rubric document.

3. Interview assessors.
Get their views on assessment requirements and collate them into a consistent rubric document.

4. Research existing rubrics.
Don’t re-invent the wheel. Using existing rubrics has the advantage of learning from the lessons of others. However, they aren’t always ideal. Copyright is the most obvious barrier. Existing rubrics might not suit the particular needs of your institution or context. In some cases, the criteria in existing rubrics might anticipate assessment needs but might never have actually been actually applied. In other words, they might be good theory but not reflect actual practice.

Generic examples of rubrics

The grade of E. Both examples below omit the grade of E. In these examples, the grade of E indicates that the task was either not done at all or done so poorly that it might as well not have been done.

Example 1: Practicum or project

Example 2: Essay requiring critical thinking and argument