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NSW Department of Education and Training
Rubrics >

Rubrics


Rubrics are a useful tool when evaluating student performances or products. There are two types of rubrics: holistic and analytic.

Holistic Rubric

Analytic Rubric

Requires the teacher to score the overall process or product as a whole, without judging the component parts separately (Nitko, 2001).

The teacher scores separate, individual parts of the product or performance first, then sums the scores to obtain a total score (Moskal, 2000; Nitko, 2001).

Want to know more about rubrics?

Further development materials on creating rubrics will be published in Term 3

When designing rubrics, teachers should consider the following points:
  • What are the assessment criteria? Do they relate to syllabus outcomes?
  • What will be the defined levels of performance?
  • What are the observable attributes required in the task that relate to achieving the assessment criteria?
  • Will students be part of the assessment process to allow for student direction?
  • Will the rubric be given to the students along with the assessment task?
  • Is the level of language accessible to all students?
When developing rubrics:

Rubrics are an assessment tool strongly aligned to 2 questions within the NSW Quality Teaching Framework.

  1. What are you going to get the students to do (or to produce)?
  2. How well do you expect them to do it?

The assessment tasks, and accompanying rubrics, focus teachers on the Quality Learning Environment Dimension of the QT framework. When developing the rubrics, teachers should consider:


Explicit Criteria
To what extent does the task provide explicit criteria for the quality of work which students are expected to produce? How can this criteria be used as a reference point to assess students' work?

High Expectations
To what extent does the task communicate high expectations of all students and encourage them to take conceptual risks?

Student Direction
A task with high student direction allows for students to exercise control over one or more of the following significant aspects:
• choice of activities to be included in the task
• time spent on the task
• pace at which the task is completed
• criteria by which they will be assessed.

Hints on how to develop a rubric

Rubrics provide guidance to students as to how the task will be assessed. They show what is important in the task and the levels of achievement required against the criteria. Rubrics should be set prior to the students beginning the work, and provided to them when the task is issued.

When devising rubrics for assessment:

  • be clear about what counts as a high-quality product and communicate the criteria to all students.
  • consider whether the criteria refer to the quality of the work explicitly, or merely give procedural or technical instructions.
  • use the criteria to assess students’ work and to provide feedback during development, as well as on completion of the task.

For information regarding rubric elements, click here
NSW Department of Education and Training
NEALS
Curriculum K-12