More About Rubrics

A rubric is a set of criteria and standards that are used to assess a student's performance on papers, projects, essays, and other assignments. Rubrics allow for standardized evaluation according to specified criteria, making grading simpler and more transparent.

Rubrics produce assessments that are far more detailed than a single, holistic grade. Instead of concluding that this was a "B- paper," the rubric-based assessment notes the level of achievement for each of the criteria (e.g., use of evidence, coherence of argument, etc ...).

The rubric provides students with the exact criteria the instructor is expecting. The rubric also provides those who have been assessed with a clear indication of what they need to accomplish in the future to better their performance. The rubric allows teachers and students alike to assess material that could otherwise be entirely subjective. It is not uncommon for instructors who employ rubrics to share the rubric with students at the start of the assignment.

Simply put, using rubrics reduces or elimnates the sujectivity of grading a written assignement and provides the student with the reason as to why a grade was awarded.

Financial Example

If a teacher earns $38,000.00 per year and works an average of 50 hours per week, that breaks down to $14.62 per hour (based on a nine month school year). If there are two assignments per week that could be graded using rubrics, the teacher has only 30 students, and only 4.15 minutes per assignment are saved (lowest estimate from Rubrics Online usability tests), the teacher will recover almost 162 hours per year, with a net dollar value of $2,368.44.

If that same teacher taught six classes (raising the number of students to 180) the annual hours saved are over 970 which represents over $14,210.00.

Either way you consider this, in hours of life recovered or by its potential financial impact, Rubrics Online is a very valuable tool.