To follow up on my previous blog post Tips for Rubric Design: yes, I gave you tips to write rubrics, but you may wonder “Where do I start?” Start by defining your criteria.
Define Your Criteria
Ask yourself these important questions: What is the most important aspect of the work I am looking to assess? Or, what characteristics of the learning outcome is the assessment task representing? This criteria must be definable and observable.
Most likely the student performance or the product we want to assess consists of several parts, steps, etc. and each may represent a curriculum goal, or an instructional goal, or skill learning. In any case, we want to have clearly definable and observable criteria for each. Taken together, these criteria provide us with a description of the whole of the learning outcome that we want to assess (Brookhart, 2013).
Write A Description for “Proficient” Level
Once you have the criteria clearly defined, you can move on to writing descriptions for each level of performance. Brookhart (2013) suggests that you start with the ‘proficient’ level, the one that you anticipate most students will reach. From here, you build up to one or two higher levels, and back down to one or two lower levels. If you are assessing a simple task, two or three levels might be sufficient. If the task is more complex, you may want to consider writing descriptions for five levels.
Aim For Observable Descriptions
It is best to write performance level descriptions that are clearly observable. These are called low-inference descriptions (Brookhart, 2013). Low-inference means that the observer does not have to draw a conclusion about what they are observing. On the other hand, high-inference descriptions require the observer to draw a conclusion about the quality they are observing. Take this level descriptor for instance: “Few grammar errors, but the meaning of the poem is still understandable.” The scorer has to draw a conclusion about how many grammar errors are ‘a few’ and whether or not the poem is ‘still understandable’. We should aim for more low-inference descriptors and only use high-inference ones when absolutely necessary and they cannot be rewritten to make them more low-inference (Brookhart, 2013).
Reference:
Brookhart, S. M. (2013). How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.