5 Benefits of Using Rubrics

I would venture to guess that most of us are very familiar if not most comfortable with, single answer multiple-choice type exams to evaluate student knowledge. However, when it comes to assessing performance, either on a skills type exam such as a simulated patient encounter or venipuncture, or a written paper, student presentation, or essay question, we need a different type of assessment.

Enter – rubrics. I find that not many faculty are as familiar with this type of assessment tool or the term. This isn’t too surprising since rubrics didn’t come into educational fashion until the mid-1990s. Simply stated, rubrics are a descriptive set of criteria set to a defined scale and used to assess student performance. Performance is defined as either the student demonstrating a skill or procedure or their submitted work such as on a paper, assignment, project or essay response. Either way, you are assessing their “performance.”  Rubrics vary significantly from simple to complex. For example, the checklist commonly used to evaluate student performance regarding physical examination skills is a simple form of a rubric. More complex ones are used when assessing term or research papers and therefore contain multiple levels of criteria and a scale. While I admit developing rubrics can be quite challenging, the good news is there are many resources and templates available so you do not need to reinvent the wheel. The critical point here is that rubrics are an effective assessment tool with many benefits.

5  benefits of rubrics

1. Assessment clarity.

Using rubrics helps us focus on what it is we want to assess or evaluate. This clarity is essential because it helps us identify those parts of the assignment or performance that matter. I am sure we have all experienced creating an assessment, and then in hindsight, we realize we were not as clear as we needed to be about what we expected from the students. I have found this especially true when assessing student performance on an objective structured clinical exam (OSCE). Or we discover the assessment didn’t provide us with the information we hoped it would about what and whether the students learned what we needed them to learn. For example, it has taken several attempts for me to craft a rubric to help me gain insight into how students process through their personal and professional ethics to arrive at a decision and course of action. Rubrics require us to consider the components, aspects, and characteristics of what we seek to assess. It helps us envision what performance outcome we are looking for and this then helps us discern when that outcome is fully met by the student, partially met or not met at all. This clarity helps us more accurately distinguish between different quality levels of performance.

2. Transparency.

How many times have you heard a student ask, “I don’t understand what you want on this assignment?”   Rubrics can provide students with clear definitions and expectations of what they must achieve (criteria) to receive a particular grade on a defined scale. For example, if I students want an “A,” they will know precisely what they need to do to receive that grade. Rubrics offer transparency by helping students clearly understand what needs to be done and how their work or performance will be judged and evaluated. It has been my experience that this type of transparency helps to reduce student stress and anxiety.

To provide this transparency, the rubric must be given to the student ahead of time. However, there are some valid objections to this approach. Some in education feel that providing the students with a rubric in advance results in the student focusing on getting each piece of the rubric done without considering the whole picture, such as in an assignment or paper.  Although there are a few studies that reveal the quality of student research papers actually improved when using a rubric (Greenberg, 2015). I have encountered this objection in PA education especially around assessing student performance during OSCE’s. Since a checklist is a form of a rubric and commonly used as the grading tool in these situations, providing such a rubric ahead of this type of examination seems illogical. As a result of direct experience, I would agree. In one program, students were given the OSCE checklists ahead of time. What I observed as a grader was that the students had memorized the checklist and performed the skills in order of the checklist, with little critical thinking evident and minimal patient interaction.  This simply highlights the importance of fully understanding the benefits and limitations of whatever assessment tool or method is being employed.

3. Grading consistency and objectivity.

Since rubrics require us to clearly define the criteria against which will be assessing the students, it helps us grade more consistently and objectively. Each student’s work is evaluated against the rubric and whether they met the criteria or didn’t. Of course, we cannot completely eliminate subjectivity, but using a rubric certainly helps.

As any of us who have to grade papers in our courses know it can be stressful and fatiguing if we don’t give ourselves enough time to do it. At the end of my ethics course each year, I had 60 essay exams to grade that averaged five pages in length. My practice was to grade 5-10 then take a break. It is important to me to remain consistent in my grading and experience has taught me that if I try to grade them all in one sitting, I can become more critical or more lenient as the hours passed. This is referred to as grader drift.  By using a rubric, it helps to keep me honest as well and make sure I am assessing against the stated criteria and I don’t get pulled off by effective or ineffective writing skills. If they don’t write particularly well, but they met the criteria, they get the points. Likewise, if they write well, I could miss that they really didn’t meet the criteria. The consistency and objectivity of rubrics are also helpful in enhancing consistency when multiple people are doing the grading.

4. Reduces grading time.

In most situations, rubrics function both as a guide for students and a grading tool for faculty. Grading essays and papers take time. There is no getting around this fact. However, having a rubric to use for each student can actually expedite grading time by helping us stay focused on the criteria against which we are assessing each student’s work. I have definitely found this to be true.

5. Improves student feedback and decrease student complaints.

When the rubric is also used as the grading tool and is returned to the students, they receive clear feedback and information about how well they met the defined criteria.  This provides an opportunity for them to see exactly how they performed on each piece or section of the rubric. This can also serve to aid students to reflect on what was good about their work and what wasn’t.  Since there were clear communication and consistency between the work or performance expected of the students and how they were assessed, it tends to reduce student grading complaints.

Rubrics are an assessment method that can provide significant benefits for both students and teachers. The appropriateness of their use must be determined by the teacher and the nature of what is being assessed. Their effectiveness rests on a carefully constructed rubric to ensure it is assessing the desired performance accurately.

Here are some references and resources if you are interested in learning more about rubrics.

Brookhart, S. M. (2013). How to create and use rubrics for formative assessment and grading. Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD.

DePaul University Teaching Commons. Types of rubrics. Retrieved from https://resources.depaul.edu/teaching-commons/teaching-guides/feedback-grading/rubrics/Pages/types-of-rubrics.aspx

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. doi.org/10.1177/0098628315587618

Shaw, P. (2016). Reenvisioning rubrics: A few brief suggestions. The Teaching Professor. Retrieved from https://www.teachingprofessor.com/topics/grading-feedback/rubrics/reenvisioning-rubrics-a-few-brief-suggestions/

Stevens, D. D., & Levi, A. (2005). Introduction to rubrics: An assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback and promote student learning. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing.

UC Berkeley.  Center for Teaching & Learning. Rubrics. Retrieved from https://teaching.berkeley.edu/resources/improve/evaluate-course-level-learning/rubrics

University of Arizona College of Medicine. Assessment and evaluations tools – Measurements: Rubrics. Retrieved from https://phoenixmed.arizona.edu/students/assessment/measurement-tools

Weimer, M. (2015). Exploring the advantages of rubrics. The Teaching Professor. Retrieved from

https://www.teachingprofessor.com/for-those-who-teach/exploring-the-advantages-of-rubrics/

Weimer, M. (2016). The value of rubrics. The Teaching Professor. Retrieved from https://www.teachingprofessor.com/topics/grading-feedback/rubrics/the-value-of-rubrics-for-teachers/