A rubric is a scoring tool that lists the criteria by which a work will be assessed, along with the several levels of achievement for these criteria. In some countries this can be defined by an exam board, while in others, it's left to the school to decide. In either case, this is a great way of providing students with the assessment criteria in which they are expected to achieve, in advance, and make the work of teachers easier, as the scoring is very quick. A rubric could look something like the following:
|
Criteria/Level |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Criteria 1 |
Description of characteristics of the work reflecting a low level of performance in the criteria. |
Description of characteristics of the work reflecting an intermediate level of performance in the criteria. |
Description of characteristics of the work reflecting a high level of performance in the criteria. |
Description of characteristics of the work reflecting the highest level of performance in the criteria. | |
|
Criteria 2 |
... |
... |
... |
... |
Here's an example of a rubric to assess the activity My favorite artist in Module 5, Being a musician, where students have to create a photo story of their favorite artist. Level 1 in Criteria 1 (Use of images) might define the lowest level of performance as "The pictures are unrelated to the content and don't enhance understanding of the content, or are distracting and create a busy feeling", contrasting with level 4 which might be defined as "The images help in presenting an overall theme with a high impact message that appeals to the audience, demonstrating an excellent synthesis".
The full range is shown in the following table:
|
Criteria/Level |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Use of images |
The pictures are unrelated to the content and don't enhance understanding of the content, or are distracting and create a busy feeling. |
Description of characteristics of the work reflecting an intermediate level of performance in the criteria. |
Description of characteristics of the work reflecting a high level of performance in the criteria. |
The images help in presenting an overall theme with a high impact message that appeals to the audience, demonstrating an excellent synthesis. |
Now, how do we score a work from a rubric? We just need to score it according to the several criteria that we have considered, according to the level of performance, and then apply a simple formula:
Here is an example:
We want to assess a work that is being scored in five criteria, each one with four levels of possible performances, and we want the final result in a scale of 0 to 100.
|
Criteria |
Score (1 to 4) |
|---|---|
|
Criteria 1 |
2 |
|
Criteria 2 |
3 |
|
Criteria 3 |
3 |
|
Criteria 4 |
4 |
|
Criteria 5 |
2 |
|
Total Score |
14 |
So the final classification will be:
Here is a list of criteria that can be useful when assessing multimedia works:
- Design
- Content
- Organization
- Navigation
- Technical aspects (such as lighting, pace, timing, exposure, color scheme, video continuity, and formats)
- Links (for example, in mind maps)
- Referencing
- Collaboration/Teamwork
Using an online spreadsheet such as Google Spreadsheets can be a good way of keeping records of our students' assessments according to these rubrics. We can obtain the final scores easily by applying formulas to cells, and can later publish them on the course page or by using Moodle's Gradebook. As this tool allows collaboration, if we have students as editors, they can also perform verification work and/or peer assessments.