Rubrics and Grading Forms

Turnitin

What is the Difference?

Rubrics

Rubrics use pre-set level descriptors to enable you to indicate how well a student did within each assessment criteria. You can indicate levels achieved using sliders and/or on a grid:

  • Qualitative rubrics are used purely to feedback to students how well they did. These are the most commonly used type of Rubric at CCCU.
  • Standard (scoring) rubrics have weighting built in and will automatically calculate the grade for you.

Grading Forms

Grading Forms allow you to write personalised comments on how well a student did within the assessment criteria. You write comments in a form divided into sections for each assessment criterion.

Pros and Cons

  • By making assessment criteria explicit, both Rubrics and Grading Forms may promote a deeper understanding of the criteria amongst learners.
  • As feedback is in the form of pre-set level descriptors, Rubrics can be an efficient way of providing assessment criteria-related feedback. Where generic criteria are used and are applicable to future assessments, being able to see the ‘next level up’ may act as a form of feedforward. Rubrics may also support consistency amongst teams of markers and provide further justification of the grade for students. However, some markers may feel this is reductive in terms of assessing the overall quality of the work. Furthermore, students may perceive Rubrics as impersonal.
  • Grading Forms enable personalised, criteria-related comments. However, that of course requires more effort.
  • Being off-script, learners may find both Rubrics and Grading Forms difficult to relate to their own work. However, this may be helped by associating on-script comments (Bubble Comments and QuickMarks) with the criteria within Rubrics and Grading Forms.
  • Even so, learners may find Rubrics further lack specificity in relation to their own work because of the generic language which tends to be used in common level descriptors.