Creating a Rubric

Hello again!

Today I want to share with you mi first rubric but first, what’s a rubric?
I’m sure that the vast majority of you already know what a rubric is, but for those who don’t know what rubrics are, I would like to explain that the commonly accepted definition of Heidi Andrade says that a rubric is a document that articulates expectations for a mission by listing criteria, or what counts, and levels that describe the quality from excellent to poor.

From my point of view, rubrics are a way to communicate to students how they will be evaluated, providing information focused on works in progress. Rubrics are a way to teach, but they are also a good way to learn, I mean, if the teacher provides rubrics to students before they complete the task, they can create their work following the points that the teacher will evaluate their work. For students is easier to perform a task knowing exactly what is expected of them and how they will be evaluated.

Then if rubrics are a good tool…LET’S USE RUBRICS!

However, before using any rubric I recommend you to do your own because in that way you will be sure that it meets its job properly.

So how can we create a rubric? Let’s see:

Actually there are a lot of online tools that allow us to create rubrics quickly and easily. In this list created by Maria Jesús you will find several tools: Rubrics for all 

After consulting the list and following the recommendations of my classmates, I chose the “quick rubric” tool. About this tool I would like to say it’s very easy to use and flexible, so you can create rubrics as you want, varying the number of rows and columns to your liking and writing on the table what you want. You do not have to register on the website to create rubrics, but if you want to save or edit your creation later, I recommend you create an account.

When you have finished your artifact you can save it to pdf format, print it, or share it online. The hardest part of this work was, for me, create a PDF with my rubric; fortunately my classmates explained me how could I do that. Therefore, to make it easier for you I leave a few screenshots explaining the process:

Go to your Rubric and clilk on "Print Rubric"

Then, clik on the "save" button and select "Save as PDF"

To conclude this post, I'd like to show my rubric. As I said before this is the first time I make a rubric so I'd love to know your opinion about it to improve it.

It’s a rubric to assess online blogs and e-projects and the criteria that I have taken into account are: grammar mistakes, innovation and originality, citations and attributions, personal opinion and detailed work, proper functioning of links and also use of online tools. The scale I have used is: Perfect! (3points), in the good way (2points) and improvement needed (1point); so the highest rating that can be obtained is 18 (6x3) and the minimum score is 6 (6x1).

And remember: we must not forget that the rubrics are for teachers but also for students, so we should do simple and well explained rubrics to facilitate the work of our students.

I hope you've learned interesting things about rubrics, see you!