Rubrics are an essential tool for any instructor, but they become even more powerful in the context of online courses. Building an effective rubric requires clearly outlining criteria, levels of student performance, and descriptors for each. Rubrics not only streamline the grading process but also enhance communication of expectations, promote self-assessment, and boost engagement.
Three Forms of Engagement in Online Courses
Engagement in online courses occurs in three ways:
- Interaction between students and content
- Interaction between students
- Interaction between students and the instructor(s)
One of the most impactful ways you can engage with students in an online asynchronous course is through assessment feedback. When done right, feedback serves as a vital link between you and your students, helping them understand where they stand and how they can improve. However, many instructors find themselves overwhelmed by the time commitment grading requires. So, how can you offer meaningful feedback without drowning in work? The answer lies in using rubrics.
What Is a Rubric?
As Stevens and Levi (2013) remind us, the origin of the word rubric has a historical basis in both the notion of redness (rubrica in Latin) and authoritative direction. Today, a rubric is a scoring tool that clarifies your expectations for an assignment. It lays out specific criteria for evaluation and describes various levels of achievement within each criterion. This might remind you of the traditional red pen used for corrections—both emphasize the importance of clear communication.
A rubric serves a dual purpose: it articulates your expectations and provides a structured scoring mechanism. Typically, it’s formatted as a table, with rows representing evaluation criteria and columns showing different performance levels, often with corresponding point values. Each cell describes the level of achievement for a particular criterion, and many rubrics have an additional column that allows instructors to write comments specific to a student’s performance, if desired.
Why Use Rubrics?
Rubrics offer numerous benefits, both logistically and pedagogically. Here’s how they can make a difference in your teaching:
Timely Feedback: Effective feedback is critical to student success, especially in online courses where face-to-face interaction is limited. Research shows that the longer the delay between an assessment and its feedback, the less impactful the feedback becomes (Rucker & Thomson, 2003). While creating a rubric takes some upfront effort, it saves time in the long run by providing a clear, easy-to-use tool for grading and offering timely feedback. Many learning management systems even have built-in rubric tools to streamline the process saving you time both in constructing the rubric and later using the rubric to grade assignments.
Clear Expectations: Rubrics don’t just give feedback—they offer students a clear scale against which their performance is measured. When students receive a rubric, they know exactly what they need to do to improve. By circling or checking off a criterion on a rubric, you provide students with areas in need of improvement and also where they have improved and are proficient. When students receive their scored rubric, they know exactly what steps they need to take to improve the skills you’ve identified as essential in your course. Of course, a rubric isn’t as effective if students aren’t familiar with the vocabulary it uses. For example, students may not be familiar with what “critical thinking” actually means, or with the specific components of a well-articulated thesis.It’s important, though, to ensure students understand the language used in the rubric. Take the time to explain terms and be available for any questions
Encouraging Critical Thinking: A rubric provides a snapshot of a student’s performance on an assignment. Thus, students are likely to notice recurring problems and improvements they can make to their work, particularly if multiple rubrics use the same criteria. This reflection encourages self-assessment and motivates students to address their specific challenges, leading to greater success in the online classroom.
Facilitating Communication: Rubrics serve to create a common language that both instructors and students can turn to when they discuss questions about students’ performance, which can reduce or eliminate grade-related concerns. They’re especially useful when multiple instructors teach the same course, ensuring consistent and fair grading across the board. Additionally, students can share rubrics with tutors or writing centers, helping them get targeted assistance.
Refining Teaching Practices: Since rubrics provide a snapshot of students’ success on assessments, they can also illustrate how effectively instructional materials are preparing students for those assessments. By analyzing rubric scores, you can identify areas where students struggle and adjust your curriculum accordingly. For example, if a rubric indicates that most students struggled with citing their research, you may want to consider modifying the curriculum to include more resources on this topic. In this way, rubrics help ensure alignment between learning objectives and assessments, which is crucial for effective course design.
In this way, using rubrics can encourage opportunities for practice. Effective feedback requires opportunities for students to practice the skills you’d like them to develop. Otherwise, you run the risk of students ignoring your feedback or focusing exclusively on their numerical grades. Fundamentally, practice and feedback require each other to be effective (Ambrose et al., 2010). Rubrics foster critical reflection on whether students are truly receiving the opportunity to improve and on the nature of those opportunities.
For more information on the use of rubrics, watch Risepoint’s webinar on rubrics.
Conclusion
Rubrics are more than just a grading tool—they’re a key component of effective course design. Rubrics provide clarity and expectations to your students, consistency and alignment between your objectives and assessments, and reduce the time you spend grading. Though creating rubrics requires an initial time investment, the benefits they offer—to both you and your students—are well worth it.
References
Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: 7 research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kelly-Riley, D., Brown, G., Condon, B., & Law, R. (2001). Washington State University critical thinking project resource guide. Retrieved from https://web.uri.edu/assessment/files/WSU-Critical-Thinking-Project-Resource-Guide.pdf
Rucker, M. L., & Thomson, S. (2003). Assessing student learning outcomes: An investigation of the relationship among feedback measures. College Student Journal, 37(3), 400–404.
Stevens, D. D., & Levi, A. J. (2013). Introduction to rubrics. Sterling, VA: Stylus drafting.
