Types of Rubrics

1.  Holistic marking rubrics

A holistic rubric presents a description for each level of performance and provides a single score according to the overall quality, proficiency, or understanding of the specific content, skills or task.

The levels of performance are usually listed in the first column and the description for each level of performance for all criteria are listed in the second column.

Task : Write a research report
Level / Points (or any other scales)	Description
Proficient / 3 point	Project had a hypothesis, procedure, collected data, and analyzed results. Project is thorough and finding(s) are in agreement with data collected. May have minor inaccuracies that do not affect quality of project.
Adequate / 2 point	Project may have a hypothesis, procedure, collected data, and analyzed results. Project not as thorough as it could be; there are a few overlooked areas. Has a few inaccuracies that affect quality of project.
Limited / 1 point	Project may have a hypothesis, procedure, collected data, and analyzed results. Has several inaccuracies that affect quality of project.

Figure 1: Example on the compositions of a holistic rubric

*The example above has been simplified for illustrative purposes. 

 

Benefits & Drawbacks

Benefits

i. Written more generically and can be applicable for many tasks

ii. Impressionistic/quick scoring providing an overview of student performance

iii. Efficient for grading large group

Drawbacks

i. Information are more general and less concise for detailed grading if students work is at varying levels spanning the criteria

ii. Not diagnostic of students’ strengths and weaknesses

iii. Criteria within the rubric cannot be weighted

 

When to use

i.  For summative type of assessment or brief homework assignment involving a single or a few performance criteria

ii. For assessment when errors in some part of process can be tolerated provided that the overall quality is high; and when feedback to be provided is general in nature

iii.For assessment tasks asking for open ended or qualitative responses such as essays, research reports, oral presentations, capstone reports, etc.

 

2.  Analytic marking rubrics

An analytic rubric presents a description for each level of performance of each criterion and provides a score for each respective criterion.

The assessment criteria are usually listed in the first column and the descriptions for different levels of performance are listed across the rows for each criterion.

Task: Writing an essay
Criteria / Grade	Excellent	Good	Pass	Fail
Content	Idea is clearly stated in opening paragraph; appropriate, concrete details support the central idea and show originality and focus.	Central idea is vague; somewhat sketchy and non-supportive to the topic; lack of focus.	Unable to find specific supporting details; more than 4 errors in information.	No central idea or supporting details.
Organization	Logically organized and well-structured displaying a beginning, a body and a conclusion. Critical thinking skills are evident.	Somewhat digresses from the central idea; ideas do not logically follow each other.	Central point and flow of essay is lost; lacks of organization and continuity,	Ideas were unorganized and vague; no particular flow was followed.
Research	Cited research information; introduced personal ideals to enhance essay cohesiveness	Some research topic was done but was inconclusive to support topic; cited information was vague.	Did little or no gathering of information on the topic; did not cite information.	No research of the topic was done.
Mechanics	No errors in word selection and use, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation.	Relatively free of errors in word selection and use, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation. (1-2 errors)	Has several errors in word selection and use, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation. (3-4 errors)	Has serious and persistent errors in word selection and use, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation.

Figure 2: Example on the compositions of an analytic rubric

*The example above has been simplified for illustrative purposes. 

 

Benefits & Drawbacks

Benefits

i. Provide detailed feedback across multiple criteria

ii. Scoring of the criteria can be weighted to reflect relative importance

iii. Able to focus on students’ strengths and weaknesses in performing the task

iv. Achieve higher consistency in grading across students and assessors

Drawbacks

i. More time consuming to develop and adopt

ii. Unless each level of performance is well-defined, assessors may not arrive at the same score.

 

When to use

For formative type of assessment which aims to provide detailed feedback for students’ improvements

For assessments which test complicated or a number of attributes

For assessment tasks asking for open ended or qualitative responses, such as essays, research reports, oral presentations, capstone reports, etc.

 

3. Item structure marking rubric

An item structure rubric presents a description for each level of performance in questions or problems structured into different parts of increasing complexity.

Similar to holistic rubric, the levels of performance are usually listed in the first column and their respective descriptions in the second column. Each part of a structured question will be mapped to different levels of performance and maximum marks will be allocated to each part of the question. The final mark would be the total of the marks obtained for each part of the question.

Task: Solving a Mathematical Problem
Grade	Descriptor	Problem Part	Marks Allocated
A (Excellent)	Able to interpret and identify the underlying logic of the problem, solve the various elements of the problem, bring various elements together to form a coherent solution to the problem, and to express that solution logically and comprehensively	1(c)	8
B (Good)	Able to identify all appropriate expression for the solution of the problem and be able to apply all to solve each element of a problem	1(b)	6
C (Satisfactory)	Able to identify all or most appropriate expressions for the solution of the problem, but unable to apply all to solve each element	1(b)
D (Pass)	Able to solve a simple problem involving one aspect of a problem only	1(a)	6
F (Fail)	Unable to solve simple problems	-	-

Figure 3: Example of the composition of an item structure rubric

*The example above has been simplified for illustrative purposes. 

 

Benefits & Drawbacks

Benefits

i. Able to assess the quality of quantitative responses by factoring in the levels of difficulty structured in the problem to solve

ii. Achieve higher consistency in grading across students and assessors

Drawbacks

i. More time consuming to develop a reliable and valid set of structured problems

ii. Score-grade conversion involved can be complicated

iii. Reliability might be affected with some outliers being able to answer sophisticated questions but not the simple questions and vice versa.

 

When to use

Appropriate for mathematically based assessment tasks or other tasks that collect quantitative responses (such as multiple choice questions)

Appropriate to assessment items composed of parts of increasing complexity such as more quantitative items, with each part aligned with the marking rubric descriptor – quantitative responses