Rubrics

Template:Moodle 2.2 Rubrics are advanced grading forms used for criteria-based assessment. The rubric consists of a set of criteria. For each criterion, several descriptive levels are provided. A numerical grade is assigned to each of these levels. The rater chooses which level answers/describes the given criterion best.

Rubric editor

Rubric editor

The rubric editor is available via the advanced grading method management screen which in turn is available via the 'Advanced grading' link in the activity settings block. The editor lets you set the rubric form name, the description and the rubric itself. The editor lets you add new criteria and levels, delete them and change the criteria order. There are several rubric options that can be configured, too. For each criterion, the criterion description should be filled. For each level, the level definition and the number of points associated with the level should be specified. Neither the criterion description nor the level definition text fields support embedded images yet.

The rubric definition must be saved using either 'Save rubric and make it ready' or 'Save as draft' button. The button sets the form definition status respectively as described at the Advanced grading methods page.

Hint: Use the Tab key to jump to the next level/criteria and even to add new criteria.

Using the rubric

Filling the rubric to assess a submission in the Assignment module

TODO: how the teacher uses the rubric during the assessment

Grade calculation

The rubric normalized score (ie basically a percentage grade) is calculated as

$G_{s}={\frac {\sum _{i=1}^{N}(g_{i}-min_{i})}{\sum _{i=1}^{N}(max_{i}-min_{i})}}$

where $g_{i}\in \mathbb {N}$ is the number of points given to the i-th criterion, $min_{i}\in \mathbb {N}$ is the minimal possible number of points for of the i-th criterion, $max_{i}\in \mathbb {N}$ is the maximal possible number of points for the i-th criterion and $N\in \mathbb {N}$ is the number of criteria in the rubric.

Example of a single criterion can be: Overall quality of the paper with the levels 5 - An excellent paper, 3 - A mediocre paper, 0 - A weak paper (the number represent the number of points).

Example: let us have an assessment form with two criteria, which both have four levels 1, 2, 3, 4. The teacher chooses level with 2 points for the first criterion and 3 points for the second criterion. Then the normalized score is:

$G_{s}={\frac {(2-1)+(3-1)}{(4-1)+(4-1)}}={\frac {3}{6}}=50\%$

Note that this calculation may be different from how you intuitively use rubric. For example, when the teacher in the previous example chose both levels with 1 point, the plain sum would be 2 points. But that is actually the lowest possible score so it maps to the grade 0 in Moodle. To avoid confusion, it is recommended to always include a level with 0 points in the rubric definition.

See also

• Advanced grading methods page for general concepts of advanced grading in Moodle
• Rubric description at Wikipedia
• Examples of Assessment Rubrics at Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators