Exploring the Advantages of Rubrics

www.facultyfocus.com /articles/teaching-professor-blog/exploring-the-advantages-of-rubrics/
Maryellen Weimer, PhD
I dont believe in giving students rubrics, a faculty member told me recently. Theyre another example of
something that waters down education. I was telling him about a study Id just read that documented
some significant improvement in student papers when students used a detailed rubric to guide their
preparation of the research paper. I wasnt very articulate in my response to him and decided Id use this
post to explore some of the issues involved in sharing rubrics and grading criteria with students.
I dont understand what you want on this assignment. Its one of those comments teachers dont like to
hear from students, and rubrics, checklists, or the grading criteria offer constructive ways to respond. They
identify those parts of an assignment or performance that matter, that if included and done well garner
good grades and learning. If teachers dont identify them, then students must figure out for themselves
what the assignment needs in order to be considered good.
The objection to sharing rubrics is not groundless. If you give students a detailed rubric, behaviorally
focused, like the one used in this study, youve essentially deconstructed (a descriptive term used by the
studys author) a research report. Youve broken it down into
multiple small pieces, enabling the student to do each piece,
patch them together, and have a research report. In the study,
research reports written using the rubric were significantly better
than those written not using a rubric. It is fair to ask whether use
of the rubric improved their research report writing in general or
only this one time on this one assignment.
Not knowing how the work will be assessed definitely adds challenge to an assignment. But whats
challenging the students? The time and energy necessary to figure out assignment criteria or the
intellectual richness of the work itself? If students get sidetracked by trying to figure out what the teacher
wants and that ends up taking as much or more time than dealing with the content, then I dont think that
makes an assignment challenging for the right reasons.
A lot of students are obsessed with trying to figure out what the teacher wants. From their long years in
school, theyve learned that different teachers want different things. Its not all random whimsy; there are
any number of criteria that most of us would agree are relevant to particular kinds of assignments. But
theres lots of variation among us at the level of detailappropriate fonts, number of references, and
whether the first person can be used in essays, for example. Students mostly see this as a guessing
game, and theres not a lot of enduring, transferrable learning that comes from trying to answer questions
that revolve around what looks to students like personal preference. Im not advocating uniform standards
here. Personal preference has its place, and some of what looks like personal preference to students isnt.
I think rubrics have value if teachers use them to get students past what the teacher wants to what criteria
make papers, projects, and performances excellent. First, seeing that delineation on a rubric is certainly
more efficient than trying to figure it out on your own, and using a rubric often garners secondary benefits.
In the second study reported by this author, students used the rubric to grade another students report.
Their feedback was not shared with the reports author. But that assessment activity alone was enough to
enable 60% of the students to rewrite their own paper and receive a significantly higher score.

We continue to keep students out of the assessment process. No, we cant let them grade their own work,
but assessment should be thought of more holistically. Its the ability to figure out what criteria others will be
using to judge your work. Its about being able to identify whats good and what isnt in your own work.
Being able to accurately assess your work and that of others is one of those lifetime skills that separates
successful professionals from those less so.
The ultimate goal should be students who dont need teacher-constructed rubrics. The question is when
and how we develop that level of assessment skill.
Reference: Greenberg, K. P. (2015). Rubric use in formative assessment: A detailed behavioral rubric
helps students improve their scientific writing skills. Teaching of Psychology, 42 (3), 211-217.