2019 - 07 - 26 - Assessments And Rubrics

When developing assessments Rubrics are an excellent way to communicate expectations regarding performance as well as to assess in a fair and systematic fashion. There are times when an automatically graded multiple-choice test won't cut it and so that's where a rubric comes in. In broad terms, rubrics come in two flavors Holistic Rubrics which describe the performance at several levels of competency holistically or more broadly. And Analytic Rubrics which break down that expected performance into a variety of criteria. While the holistic rubric can offer more flexibility in order to provide meaningful feedback for the learners it often needs to be accompanied with more narrative or detailed feedback. Depending on the detail and clarity in the analytic rubric the need for additional feedback can be minimized and a well written analytic rubric with enough detail can be administered by several assessors to and generate the same result. The questions as to which rubric style to use are often dependent on the amount of flexibility needed and the amount of time there is for generating more individualized and detailed feedback.