Introduction: A search for "rubrics" in Google returns over 2 million results while Amazon.com claims over 30,000 educational books that address them in one shape or another. For any educator looking to know more about rubrics and how to use them in his or her classroom, finding a starting point can be challenging and difficult.
This wiki was created as a place to address two needs: First, to explore what makes a rubric a "quality rubric" with definitions, examples, and non-examples. Second, to wrestle with some of the issues that come along with them.
Definition:There are a variety of explanations as to the origins of the word, ranging from text in Medieval manuscripts inked in red in order to draw attention or highlight the words to annotations in the margin of a religious text. In education, the definition appears to change dramatically from author to author, website to website. Below is a Wordle created from definitions from 5 different rubric creation sites. Most definitions address the concepts of performance and articulating criteria for a task.
Even though many of the sites use the same words in their definition, it is a challenge to determine what makes a quality rubric or what makes one rubric more useful than another. It has been our experience that rubrics can serve as a useful and powerful instructional tool that can dramatically impact how students and teachers communicate about assessment tasks. Quality Rubrics can provide formative feedback and support students’ self-assessment of their work process and product.
What's on this wiki:This wiki has been designed around questions that have been asked at professional development, Tweeted out, or posted on blogs. These questions include:
We've also included numerousresourcesand tools as well as opportunities for you to work with rubrics and explore attributes of quality rubrics. If you have any specific questions about the contact on this wiki, please contact us. You can also reach the main author of the site (Jennifer Borgioli) on Twitter via @JennLCI or via email. The sidebar (on the right side of the page) contains links to our guiding questions.
A note regarding copyright - these resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please be sure to maintain the footers on any Word documents you find on the site.
A note about the rubrics used in this wiki as examples and non-examples
Rubrics are almost always a work in progress and most have strengths and weaknesses. As a result, on this wiki, a rubric may be used to demonstrate a non-example of a trait of quality rubrics but could be a quality example for a different attribute. Conversely, some of the quality examples may be lacking in other areas. We are using the rubrics to explore how to attend to details so we can ensure that any one rubric is as clear, explicit, and effective as possible.
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