Define standards and criteria for rubrics

What constitutes the level of achievement in a task?

You can decide on the standards for your assessment task by:

• consulting a taxonomy, such as Bloom’s or SOLO, to get clear about performance progression. The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) standard descriptors are also useful to consult.
• collecting student samples and looking for themes in performance and ability.
• taking or adapting words and phrases from other well-written rubrics for assessments of a similar nature.

Various standard scales exist; they typically range from 2 to 5 point scales, whereby a 2 point scale is a binary scale of competent and not yet competent.

When choosing a standard other than Monash’s (HD, D, C, P, N), it is necessary to have clear overall definitions of each standard with descriptors for each criteria. It is also important to map them back to Monash’s standards. There should be a clear justification for using a particular set of standards, such as if one already exists in a particular industry or that the unit is competency-based.

It is also important to consider what understanding students and markers have of your chosen standards. Within a course, having units and assessments that vary in terms of expectations for ‘competence’ can cause confusion and limit students’ understanding of what constitutes a quality task. A collective set of standards helps to maintain consistency across tasks, units, and courses. The HD, D, C, P, and N labels are well known, so they are a good place to start when designing a rubric.

What are the components that will be marked?

Criteria show students and markers what is being marked and what learning is valued.

For criteria to be effective, each component should be:

• Connected to the unit learning outcomes, and a core skill, ability or understanding needed to complete the assessment task.
• Task-specific and detailed enough to be understood as a criteria. For example, not just ‘Report writing’ but ‘Produces a professional client report that selects high quality points of interest and analysis’. Verbs from Bloom’s taxonomy can be used to describe the overall performance of the criteria.
• Observable and measurable. For something to be observable, it can be seen or heard in a written or oral submission; and for something to be measurable, it can be completed at different levels of mastery.
• Distinct, and thus entirely separate from all other criteria. There should not be any overlap.
• Manageable, in that it shouldn’t be too broad, or include more than 3 or 4 components. Criteria should include significant elements of the task but not so many that it isn’t feasible for students and markers.

Once you have selected the components, expand upon them so as to provide some clear context, and also reinforce that they are significant enough to be assessed. For example, instead of ‘Critical evaluation’ as a criteria, have ‘Critically evaluates financial market information and provides evidence based justifications for professional decisions made’ instead. This helps you to clarify exactly what each criteria is focused on.