M11c - Moodle Assignment Rubric

Rubrics let you define grading criteria with levels that you can select depending on how well each student meets each criterion. You can give feedback only (no numeric grade) or you can define points for each level, which automatically calculates a grade. In combination with Rubric uou can optionally leave a further individualised comment for each level, a summary feedback comment, and upload a feedback file. Rubrics can make marking fast, standardised and benchmarked, and can also help students to understand the marking criteria before they write and submit their work.

Rubrics contrast with Marking Guides (or Grading Forms in Turnitin) - the latter allow you to specify a criteria but instead of levels there is only a numeric grade to give.

Educational notes

Students can find it very challenging to relate their Rubric feedback to their numeric mark. One approach is to allow the Rubric to calculate the mark by associating points with each level. Students can then understand the relative weighting of each criteria, and where they lost and gained marks. Some UCL students have reported that they appreciate this clarity, and some tutors have said it helps them to focus their responses to student queries.

Students appreciate assessors using the comments field to explain the level the student reached on each criterion of the Rubric.

Where Rubrics are used, it is helpful to use the same wording in any inline comments, as far as possible, to help students relate the comments to the criteria.

Detailed step-by-step guidance on Rubrics is available from moodledocs.