holistic rubric for essay writing

Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics

May 1, 2014

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Whether you’re new to rubrics, or you just don’t know their formal names, it may be time for a primer on rubric terminology.

So let’s talk about rubrics for a few minutes. What we’re going to do here is describe two frequently used kinds of rubrics,  holistic and analytic , plus a less common one called the single-point rubric (my favorite, for the record). For each one, we’ll look at an example and explore its pros and cons.

Holistic Rubrics

A holistic rubric is the most general kind. It lists three to five levels of performance, along with a broad description of the characteristics that define each level. The levels can be labeled with numbers (such as 1 through 4), letters (such as A through F) or words (such as Beginning through Exemplary ). What each level is called isn’t what makes the rubric holistic — it’s the way the characteristics are all lumped together.

Suppose you’re an unusually demanding person. You want your loved ones to know what you expect if they should ever make you breakfast in bed. So you give them this holistic rubric:

When your breakfast is done, you simply gather your loved ones and say, “I’m sorry my darlings, but that breakfast was just a 2. Try harder next time.”

The main advantage of a holistic rubric is that it’s easy on the teacher — in the short run, anyway. Creating a holistic rubric takes less time than the others, and grading with one is faster, too. You just look over an assignment and give one holistic score to the whole thing.

The main disadvantage of a holistic rubric is that it doesn’t provide targeted feedback to students , which means they’re unlikely to learn much from the assignment. Although many holistic rubrics list specific characteristics for each level, the teacher gives only one score, without breaking it down into separate qualities. This often leads the student to approach the teacher and ask, “Why did you give me a 2?” If the teacher is the explaining kind, he will spend a few minutes breaking down the score. If not, he’ll say something like, “Read the rubric.” Then the student has to guess which factors had the biggest influence on her score. For a student who really tries hard, it can be heartbreaking to have no idea what she’s doing wrong.

Holistic rubrics are most useful in cases when there’s no time (or need, though that’s hard to imagine) for specific feedback. You see them in standardized testing — the essay portion of the SAT is scored with a 0-6 holistic rubric. When hundreds of thousands of essays have to be graded quickly, and by total strangers who have no time to provide feedback, a holistic rubric comes in handy.

Analytic Rubrics

An analytic rubric  breaks down the characteristics of an assignment into parts, allowing the scorer to itemize and define exactly what aspects are strong, and which ones need improvement.

So for the breakfast in bed example, an analytic rubric would look like this:

In this case, you’d give your loved ones a separate score for each category. They might get a 3 on Presentation , but a 2 on Food and just a 1 on Comfort . To make feedback even more targeted, you could also highlight specific phrases in the rubric, like, “the recipient is crowded during the meal” to indicate exactly what went wrong.

This is where we see the main advantage of the analytic rubric: It gives students a clearer picture of why they got the score they got. It is also good for the teacher, because it gives her the ability to justify a score on paper, without having to explain everything in a later conversation.

Analytic rubrics have two significant disadvantages , however: (1) Creating them takes a lot of time . Writing up descriptors of satisfactory work — completing the “3” column in this rubric, for example — is enough of a challenge on its own. But to have to define all the ways the work could go wrong, and all the ways it could exceed expectations, is a big, big task. And once all that work is done, (2) students won’t necessarily read the whole thing.  Facing a 36-cell table crammed with 8-point font is enough to send most students straight into a nap. And that means they won’t clearly understand what’s expected of them.

Still, analytic rubrics are useful when you want to cover all your bases, and you’re willing to put in the time to really get clear on exactly what every level of performance looks like.

Single-Point Rubrics

A single-point rubric is a lot like an analytic rubric, because it breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria. What makes it different is that it only describes the criteria for proficiency ; it does not attempt to list all the ways a student could fall short, nor does it specify how a student could exceed expectations.

A single-point rubric for breakfast in bed would look like this:

Notice that the language in the “Criteria” column is exactly the same as the “3” column in the analytic rubric. When your loved ones receive this rubric, it will include your written comments on one or both sides of each category, telling them exactly how they fell short (“runny eggs,” for example) and how they excelled (“vase of flowers”). Just like with the analytic rubric, if a target was simply met,  you can just highlight the appropriate phrase in the center column.

If you’ve never used a single-point rubric, it’s worth a try. In 2010, Jarene Fluckiger studied a collection of teacher action research studies on the use of single-point rubrics. She found that student achievement increased with the use of these rubrics, especially when students helped create them and used them to self-assess their work.

The single-point rubric has several  advantages : (1) It contains far less language than the analytic rubric, which means students are more likely to read it and it will take less time to create , while still providing rich detail about what’s expected. (2) Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended . When using full analytic rubrics, I often find that students do things that are not described on the rubric, but still depart from expectations. Because I can’t find the right language to highlight, I find myself hand-writing justifications for a score in whatever space I can find. This is frustrating, time-consuming and messy. With a single-point rubric, there’s no attempt to predict all the ways a student might go wrong. Similarly, the undefined “Advanced” column places no limits on how students might stretch themselves. “If the highest level is already prescribed then creativity may be limited to that pre-determined level,” says Fluckiger. “Students may surprise us if we leave quality open-ended.”

The main disadvantage  of single-point rubrics is that using them requires more writing on the teacher’s part. If a student has fallen short in many areas, completing that left-hand column will take more time than simply highlighting a pre-written analytic rubric.

Need Ready-Made Rubrics?

My Rubric Pack gives you four different designs in Microsoft Word and Google Docs formats. It also comes with video tutorials to show you how to customize them for any need, plus a Teacher’s Manual to help you understand the pros and cons of each style. Check it out here:

Fluckiger, J. (2010). Single point rubric: A tool for responsible student self-assessment. Teacher Education Faculty Publications.  Paper 5. Retrieved April 25, 2014 from http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/tedfacpub/5 .

Mertler, C. A. (2001). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom.  Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation , 7(25). Retrieved April 30, 2014 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=25 .

Know Your Terms  is my effort to build a user-friendly knowledge base of terms every educator should know. New items will be added on an ongoing basis. If you heard some term at a PD and didn’t want to admit you didn’t know what it meant, send it to me via the  contact  form and I’ll research it for you. 

What to Read Next

Categories: Instruction , Learning Theory

Tags: assessment , college teaching , Grades 3-5 , Grades 6-8 , Grades 9-12 , Grades K-2 , know your terms , rubrics

69 Comments

Jen, This is an awesome, thoughtful post and idea. I’m using this in my class with a final project the kids are turning in this morning. I’m excited about the clarity with which I can evaluate their projects.

I’m so glad to hear it. If you’re willing to share what you made and tell me how it all went later on, I would be thrilled to hear it.

So appreciated! These practical, detailed applications are helpful! Mahalo from Kauai, Hi.

Rubrics are great tools for making expectations explicit. Thanks for this post which gives me some vocabulary to discuss rubrics. Though, I could use some resources on rubric scoring, b/c I see a lot of teachers simply adding up the number of squares and having that be the total point value of an assignment, which leads to incorrect grades on assignments. I’ve found some converters, but haven’t found a resource that has the math broken out.

Thanks for the feedback, Jeremey! You are not the first person to request a clearer breakdown on the math for this rubric (or others), and you’re right, teachers definitely have different approaches to this. I have some good ideas on this, so I will plan a post on it for the near future.

Did you do a post regarding grading a single rubric?

Yup! Here’s Meet the Single Point Rubric . You might also be interested in How To Turn Rubric Scores into Grades . Hope this helps!

Really rubric is a very useful tool when assessing students in class

There is no such thing as an appropriate converter. Levels are levels and points and percentages are points and percentages and never the twain should meet.

(I’m very late to the discussion.)

Years ago, Ken O’Connor was the person who turned my grading around. For that reason, I would be against using the “0-80%” or “0-80 points” piece. O’Connor is very clear about how grades below 50 ruin a grade average.

I would love to be able to grade with standards only, but what I do instead, to fit into our district grading software, is to grade by standards (using letters, where “proficient” is a “B”), and the traditional letters are equal to 95/85/75/65/55. That gives kids a chance if they ever somehow earn only a F. It doesn’t kill the rest of their grade.

(I forgot to say that I absolutely love the one-column rubric. It is going to be a huge help to me this year.)

This post was so helpful! I am struggling right now with assigning Habits of Work grades to my Spanish students in middle and high school. I was using an analytic rubric for both my assessment and the students’ self-assessment, but it’s possible the quantity of words was exacerbating the problem of students scoring themselves in the best column out of reflex or habit. I’m going to try a single-point rubric to see if that can lead us to some more reflective thought.

This website was very helpful. Thank you.

LOVELY post. So didactic and useful. After reading some quite dense posts on rubrics, I’ve enjoyed this a lot. You have now convinced me to use rubrics! THANK YOU Jenny and CONGRATS!!!

SINGLE-POINT rubrics

I have not seen or heard of single point rubrics. I’m really excited to try that out. Less wordy and easier for students to see what is expected of them and get meaningful feedback.

Oooh! I never thought I’d like a post on rubrics, but this was awesome! Thanks for your great explanations. I’m currently working my way through your Teacher’s Guide to Tech/Jumpstart program and I wanted to take a minute and tell you how much I appreciate your site and podcasts too. Everything is so concise, interesting and helpful!

Sariah, thank you!! I haven’t gotten a ton of feedback on the JumpStart program, so it’s really nice to hear that! Let me know if you have any questions!

I am Master of Mathematics Education student and I am busy compiling my assignments on rubrics. Your notes are well explained and straight to the point. However, my Professor have instructed as to look up on primarily rubrics and multi-trait rubrics that i seems not to get. Do you care to differentiate them for me? Thank you.

Hi Martha. I was not familiar with those two terms, so I did a bit of reading in this post: http://carla.umn.edu/assessment/vac/improvement/p_5.html It seems to me that a primary trait rubric focuses on a single, somewhat broad description of how well the student achieved a certain goal. Multi-trait rubrics allow teachers to assess a task on a variety of descriptors. To me, the primary trait seems very much like the holistic rubric, and the multi-trait rubric seems a lot like an analytic rubric. If anyone else reading this knows the finer points of the differences among these four, I would love to hear them!

How to better calculate a grade with a rubric. Please see: http://tinypic.com/r/2dl6d5c/9 .

Thank you so much for this humorous and informative approach to rubrics. It seems to me that the single-point rubric, which I agree makes the most sense for assignment specific rubrics, is really just a clear set of assignment instructions / expectations with the addition of over/under columns to make it rubric-ish.

I love to have students help create rubrics. By the end of the year, we often create the entire rubric together as a class, but often I allow them to start by assigning one “open” section that they think I should grade on for which I help them write “exceeds, meets, doesn’t meet” standards. Then we move on to them assigning points for each standard that I’ve written (this is fascinating for me to see what they weight more heavily), and finally on to writing their own categories for which I write the standards, and then we reverse so that I write the categories and they write the standards. I give a lot of writing and speaking assignments and they really like being involved in how and what and how much we grade. (I never find they are too easy on themselves, either.) I love the single-point rubric especially for assignments I come up with off the cuff and don’t have time to write an elaborate rubric for!

If you’re moving away from traditional grades, the single-point rubric is a perfect instrument for delivering specific feedback.

This is a great site and I really liked the one example used with the multiple rubric styles so we could really understand the difference in them. I am confused about the difference between a Single Point rubric and a Primary Trait rubric. You didn’t mention the Primary Trait rubric so I am wondering if they are the same. Thank you, Karen

Thanks for writing in and for your kind words! I work for Cult of Pedagogy, and in answering your question, I started scrolling myself. Jenn responded to another reader, and I think you might find her response helpful as well as the link:

http://carla.umn.edu/assessment/vac/improvement/p_5.html

“It seems to me that a primary trait rubric focuses on a single, somewhat broad description of how well the student achieved a certain goal. Multi-trait rubrics allow teachers to assess a task on a variety of descriptors. To me, the primary trait seems very much like the holistic rubric, and the multi-trait rubric seems a lot like an analytic rubric.”

Hope this helps!

I do a sort of analytic + single point. I don’t include lots of writing on an analytic rubric. I give them the thick descriptions printed out earlier and I go over them (so each category actually does have detailed descriptions), but the rubric I mark is made up of lots of space and numbers 1-10. I keep it to ten categories. I leave lots of space for comments and comment on every category (even if it’s just one word). I conference with each student briefly when I hand back the rubrics. Each student is given two attempts – first for feedback, second for growth and a final score. (I taught high school theatre, so this method worked the best for me.)

Jen, Thank you for succinctly explaining the types of rubrics and THANK YOU for the free downloadable templates. I will share them with my education senior students!!! AWEsome work you have done.

You are very welcome, Alberta!

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you for the detailed information. I have been using single point rubrics from last year and I love them, but do you think we should give students a checklist as well? If so, what should it look like? I don’t want to kill their creativity, though.

I think the rubric can contain a checklist if you want students to include specific things in their end product, or you could do a separate checklist, then add something like “all items from checklist are included” in your rubric language. There is definitely a gray area here: Defining requirements too narrowly could stifle creativity, but it’s also important to be clear about expectations.

I have been working on a variation of the single-point rubric that I think might be even more useful for communicating expectations and feedback to students. Check it out here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12JBIcpjeDYuTbQhEgJg2LKC5YPMDwTcIYCtl6jSGTeE/edit?usp=sharing

Really appreciate this post! Thank you. I have used the analytic approach, but I can really see the benefits of a single-point system. Thanks for your clear explanation.

Saying that ‘analytical’ rubrics are difficult and time consuming to write is true, but is also a cop-out. Taking the time to clearly define and articulate student behaviours at each level promotes student independence and self-assessment, and results in better outcomes. The fact that students have departed from what’s written on your rubric suggests that either the assessment wasn’t explained well enough or the rubric itself is of poor quality.

The analytical rubrics provided here fall well short of quality rubric standards. I would suggest reading Patrick griffin’s Assessment for Teaching, and visit the ReliableRubrics websites for good examples.

Thanks for the book and website suggestions, Martin. I do think it’s possible to construct a clear 4-column analytical rubric, but I have rarely seen one that manages to cover all the bases. The ones that DO cover every possible outcome are often insanely long. I’m thinking of some I got in grad school that were–I kid you not–several pages long and written in 9-point font. Despite the fact that I am a diligent student, even I got to the point where I threw in the towel and stopped reading the whole thing. Instead, I just gave my attention to the “3” and “4” columns. I’m guessing that other students do the same thing. If our goal is to have students understand what’s being asked of them and to pay attention to the details, why spend so much time on defining what NOT to do?

Thank you Jennifer, I have shared this with fellow colleagues in Costa Rica. I know this will be of great use!!

Thank you for this work. Your site has been very helfpul to me.

Thank you so much Jennifer! You seem to be an expert in making rubrics! I really appreciate the simplicity of the delivery of your thoughts about rubrics. I just want to ask if there is such a rubric for a cooperative activity? I am Geraldine, by the way, and me and my classmates are planning to conduct cooperative listening activities among Grade 8 students. We are having a hard time looking for a rubric that will assess their outputs as a group. Can you suggest one? Your response will be of great help. Thank you so much. May God bless you more and always!

Hi Geraldine, I work with Cult of Pedagogy and although we can’t think of anything specific to what you’re looking for, I’m thinking you might want to check out our Assessment & Feedback Pinterest board — there are a ton or resources that might help you create a rubric that would be specific to your needs. The most important thing is to identify what you want students to be able to do in the end. For example: listen to others with eye contact. (Be sure to check out Understanding by Design .) Then you can choose a rubric structure that will best fit your needs and provide effective feedback. Other than that, you might be able to find some great ideas through a Google search.

Well, thank you so much! May God bless you!

Great information. Can you tell me how you come to a total/final score on an analytic rubric if the student receives a variety of scores in the different categories? Thanks.

This is a great question! I’d check out Jenn’s post, Speed Up Grading with Rubric Codes . Even if you don’t use the codes, you’ll see in the video how an overall score can be given to a paper, even when scores in indivual categories vary. Basically the overall score reflects where most criteria have been met, along with supportive feedback. Hope this helps!

I loved the all of the rubrics you created for “Breakfast In Bed”. Your topic was an awesome analogy for teacher created tasks. I personally prefer the analytic rubric because I believe it gives the most accurate feedback to the student. If you feel more information is needed, you could expand the categories in the rubric, for example in this case, you could add a column called “sensory enhancements” , such as music or table setting. If you want to add a more personal comment you can always add it in the margin.

This issue has always frustrated me. I have recently been a HUGE proponent of holistic rubrics, but I do see the disadvantage of the feedback issue. For my first time teaching college composition, I used analytic rubrics–and hated them. It wasn’t the making rubrics that was time consuming, but determining how to break up the points and how to assign earned points for a paper. I would score a paper, add up all the points, and realized the paper got a B when, in reality, I knew it was a C-level paper. So I would erase and recalculate until I got the points I thought were more accurate. It took FOREVER!!! After some research, I decided to move to a holistic rubric, and it made grading way faster, but more importantly, I thought the numerical grade was much more accurate and consistent. (Score 6 would get a 95, 5 would be 85, etc., and I would give + or – for 3 more or less points). For feedback, I would annotate and underline/circle the parts of the criteria that they struggled in or did well in and left an end comment. And while I had them turn in a draft that I would give feedback on, I didn’t use the rubric for the draft feedback. Just comments on the paper.

I’m willing to try to single-point, but to get to that final numerical grade (since a no-grade classroom isn’t allowed, unfortunately) you’d still have to break down the points arbitrarily like an analytic rubric. Who’s to say that “structure” should be 30 points while “grammar” should be 10? What’s the actual difference between a 40/50 in “analysis” and a 42/50? My grading PTSD is resurfacing just thinking about grading essays that way. But at the same time, I also don’t like the limited feedback of the holistic rubric.

This is a link to a site where you can download a PDF that talks about a lot of composition issues, but pages 74-76 is about rubrics. Curious to know everyone’s thoughts. https://community.macmillan.com/docs/DOC-1593

Thank you so much 🙂 I learned a lot from this kind of Rubrics 🙂 (y)

Thank you very much for the breakdown of the the types of rubrics. This was very informational!

Thank you for the fantastic article. I came here from the Single Point Rubric post, and I feel so much better equipped to grade my next assignment. Thank you again!

Radhika, Yay! We are glad you found what you needed for your next assignment!

Jennifer, the clear, concise explanations of three types of rubrics are very refreshing. I teach a course called “Assessment and Measurement” to pre-service teachers and I introduce the analytic and holistic rubrics for them to use in performance assessments. The pre-service teachers spend a lot of time with just the language they want to use and, although I think rubrics are the path to more accuracy in grading, I find the idea is overwhelming to novice teachers. May I share this with my students? Of course giving you due credit. This is excellent.

Hi Hazel! Thanks for the positive feedback. You are welcome to share this post with your students!

Thank you! Your picture at the very beginning (and your examples) made the difference between holistic and analytical instantly click for me! Also, I have never heard of single point rubrics before, so I am excited to try them out this fall with an assignment or two that I think they would go perfectly with! Lastly, thanks for the templates!

I’ve been using rubrics for a long time. I started with the most complex, comprehensive things you cannot even imagine. It drove the kids crazy, and me too. Now I teach English to adults (as a 2nd or nth language) and I write much simpler rubrics. But they still have too much information. You are brilliant here with the single point rubric. What do you need to do to get it right? Write in the ways they didn’t match it, which is what you need to do anyways. I’m changing immediately to single point rubrics. I’ll also read your other posting about single point rubrics to see if you have any other ideas. I just met your blog this week (Online Global Academy) and will return, I’m sure. Many thanks. Lee

This is great to hear, Lee! Thanks for sharing.

I’ve always used rubrics but especially appreciate the single point rubric.

Hi My name is Andrena Weir, I work at the American School of Marrakech. Thank you so much for your information. As a Physical Ed teacher these rubrics are great. I like the one column rubric. I feel I spent too much time grading in ways that consume too much time. This is so much appreciated. I need someone like you to be in-contact with if I’m struggling to retrieve new Ideas. Thank you so very much, have the best day.

How about this type of rubric. Al the benefits of analytic but without the verbiage.

The food is raw/burned under/over cooked perfectly cooked

The tray is missing missing some items complete and utensils are dirty clean well presented

You get the idea

e.g. For Maths projects

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19MXAjBdiEHXwuxg0w7NkRIKuc4X7VNj1qOE74o_vNss/edit?usp=sharing

The blog destroyed my formatting.

The food is || raw/burned || under/over cooked || perfectly cooked

The tray is || missing || missing some items || complete and utensils are || dirty || clean || well presented

or check the linked example

I use rubrics with most of my practical assignments and yes they are very time consuming. After reading this post I’m very excited to try the single-point rubric. Most of the time my students just want to know what is needed. This way they can identify what I want them to be able to do. Thanks so much for this information about rubrics.

So glad this was helpful, Amy! I’ll be sure to let Jenn know.

Want to use analytical rubric

Thanks so much for all of the information. This is great to have as a resource!

I’ve never heard of a single-point rubric before but I love the idea! Your article totally spoke my language and touched on all of my concerns. Thanks for the tips!

Hi, Jennifer, I always come away with actionable tips. I am a faculty developer and Instructional Coach. Rubrics pose challenges for teachers, novice and seasoned alike, so thank you for these discussions to shine a light on rubrics, good and bad.

Meg, I am glad this post was helpful for you in your role! I will be sure to pass on your comments to Jenn.

Being in a rubricade, a crusade of rubrics, against the powers that might be from my school… I’m glad to read what you’ve made.

Neither the academic coordinator nor the headmaster seems to know anything about having more than four levels of achievement. Nothing about having single point rubrics or the ones needed for my laboratory reports which go up to 7 with numbers not correlative.

I’m a high (and middle) school natural sciences teacher, my specialty field is physics.

The rubric in question (rejected by my superiors) has been developped since my first days in the classroom, about 2 thousand eleven. I’ve been modifying it from time to time according to the new breakthroughs experienced in practice.

Maybe your really nice webpage will help me out in going past this nonsense.

Thanks a lot!

Glad you found this helpful!

A holistic rubric is only easier if the faculty are just slapping grades on assignments, which they shouldn’t be doing with any rubric, including a very detailed analytic one. There should be summary comments that explain how the student’s specific response to the assignment meets the descriptor for each score level and then suggestions for what they could do to improve (even if they got an A).

Thanks for your comment- as Jenn mentions in the post, holistic rubrics are limited in their space for feedback. Many teachers prefer the Single Point Rubric for personalized feedback. If the point of rubrics is to set students up with their next steps, this is one you might want to try!

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Writing Rubrics [Examples, Best Practices, & Free Templates]

Writing rubrics are essential tools for teachers.

Rubrics can improve both teaching and learning. This guide will explain writing rubrics, their benefits, and how to create and use them effectively.

What Is a Writing Rubric?

Table of Contents

A writing rubric is a scoring guide used to evaluate written work.

It lists criteria and describes levels of quality from excellent to poor. Rubrics provide a standardized way to assess writing.

They make expectations clear and grading consistent.

Key Components of a Writing Rubric

• Criteria : Specific aspects of writing being evaluated (e.g., grammar, organization).
• Descriptors : Detailed descriptions of what each level of performance looks like.
• Scoring Levels : Typically, a range (e.g., 1-4 or 1-6) showing levels of mastery.

Example Breakdown

Benefits of Using Writing Rubrics

Writing rubrics offer many advantages:

• Clarity : Rubrics clarify expectations for students. They know what is required for each level of performance.
• Consistency : Rubrics standardize grading. This ensures fairness and consistency across different students and assignments.
• Feedback : Rubrics provide detailed feedback. Students understand their strengths and areas for improvement.
• Efficiency : Rubrics streamline the grading process. Teachers can evaluate work more quickly and systematically.
• Self-Assessment : Students can use rubrics to self-assess. This promotes reflection and responsibility for their learning.

Examples of Writing Rubrics

Here are some examples of writing rubrics.

Narrative Writing Rubric

Persuasive Writing Rubric

Best Practices for Creating Writing Rubrics

Let’s look at some best practices for creating useful writing rubrics.

1. Define Clear Criteria

Identify specific aspects of writing to evaluate. Be clear and precise.

The criteria should reflect the key components of the writing task. For example, for a narrative essay, criteria might include plot development, character depth, and use of descriptive language.

Clear criteria help students understand what is expected and allow teachers to provide targeted feedback.

Insider Tip : Collaborate with colleagues to establish consistent criteria across grade levels. This ensures uniformity in expectations and assessments.

2. Use Detailed Descriptors

Describe what each level of performance looks like.

This ensures transparency and clarity. Avoid vague language. Instead of saying “good,” describe what “good” entails. For example, “Few minor grammatical errors that do not impede readability.”

Detailed descriptors help students gauge their performance accurately.

Insider Tip : Use student work samples to illustrate each performance level. This provides concrete examples and helps students visualize expectations.

3. Involve Students

Involve students in the rubric creation process. This increases their understanding and buy-in.

Ask for their input on what they think is important in their writing.

This collaborative approach not only demystifies the grading process but also fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility in students.

Insider Tip : Conduct a workshop where students help create a rubric for an upcoming assignment. This interactive session can clarify doubts and make students more invested in their work.

4. Align with Objectives

Ensure the rubric aligns with learning objectives. This ensures relevance and focus.

If the objective is to enhance persuasive writing skills, the rubric should emphasize argument strength, evidence quality, and persuasive techniques.

Alignment ensures that the assessment directly supports instructional goals.

Insider Tip : Regularly revisit and update rubrics to reflect changes in curriculum and instructional priorities. This keeps the rubrics relevant and effective.

5. Review and Revise

Regularly review and revise rubrics. Ensure they remain accurate and effective.

Solicit feedback from students and colleagues. Continuous improvement of rubrics ensures they remain a valuable tool for both assessment and instruction.

Insider Tip : After using a rubric, take notes on its effectiveness. Were students confused by any criteria? Did the rubric cover all necessary aspects of the assignment? Use these observations to make adjustments.

6. Be Consistent

Use the rubric consistently across all assignments.

This ensures fairness and reliability. Consistency in applying the rubric helps build trust with students and maintains the integrity of the assessment process.

Insider Tip : Develop a grading checklist to accompany the rubric. This can help ensure that all criteria are consistently applied and none are overlooked during the grading process.

7. Provide Examples

Provide examples of each performance level.

This helps students understand expectations. Use annotated examples to show why a particular piece of writing meets a specific level.

This visual and practical demonstration can be more effective than descriptions alone.

Insider Tip : Create a portfolio of exemplar works for different assignments. This can be a valuable resource for both new and experienced teachers to standardize grading.

How to Use Writing Rubrics Effectively

Here is how to use writing rubrics like the pros.

1. Introduce Rubrics Early

Introduce rubrics at the beginning of the assignment.

Explain each criterion and performance level. This upfront clarity helps students understand what is expected and guides their work from the start.

Insider Tip : Conduct a rubric walkthrough session where you discuss each part of the rubric in detail. Allow students to ask questions and provide examples to illustrate each criterion.

2. Use Rubrics as a Teaching Tool

Use rubrics to teach writing skills. Discuss what constitutes good writing and why.

This can be an opportunity to reinforce lessons on grammar, organization, and other writing components.

Insider Tip : Pair the rubric with writing workshops. Use the rubric to critique sample essays and show students how to apply the rubric to improve their own writing.

3. Provide Feedback

Use the rubric to give detailed feedback. Highlight strengths and areas for improvement.

This targeted feedback helps students understand their performance and learn how to improve.

Insider Tip : Instead of just marking scores, add comments next to each criterion on the rubric. This personalized feedback can be more impactful and instructive for students.

4. Encourage Self-Assessment

Encourage students to use rubrics to self-assess.

This promotes reflection and growth. Before submitting their work, ask students to evaluate their own writing against the rubric.

This practice fosters self-awareness and critical thinking.

Insider Tip : Incorporate self-assessment as a mandatory step in the assignment process. Provide a simplified version of the rubric for students to use during self-assessment.

5. Use Rubrics for Peer Assessment

Use rubrics for peer assessment. This allows students to learn from each other.

Peer assessments can provide new perspectives and reinforce learning.

Insider Tip : Conduct a peer assessment workshop. Train students on how to use the rubric to evaluate each other’s work constructively. This can improve the quality of peer feedback.

6. Reflect and Improve

Reflect on the effectiveness of the rubric. Make adjustments as needed for future assignments.

Continuous reflection ensures that rubrics remain relevant and effective tools for assessment and learning.

Insider Tip : After an assignment, hold a debrief session with students to gather their feedback on the rubric. Use their insights to make improvements.

Check out this video about using writing rubrics:

Common Mistakes with Writing Rubrics

Creating and using writing rubrics can be incredibly effective, but there are common mistakes that can undermine their effectiveness.

Here are some pitfalls to avoid:

1. Vague Criteria

Vague criteria can confuse students and lead to inconsistent grading.

Ensure that each criterion is specific and clearly defined. Ambiguous terms like “good” or “satisfactory” should be replaced with concrete descriptions of what those levels of performance look like.

2. Overly Complex Rubrics

While detail is important, overly complex rubrics can be overwhelming for both students and teachers.

Too many criteria and performance levels can complicate the grading process and make it difficult for students to understand what is expected.

Keep rubrics concise and focused on the most important aspects of the assignment.

3. Inconsistent Application

Applying the rubric inconsistently can lead to unfair grading.

Ensure that you apply the rubric in the same way for all students and all assignments. Consistency builds trust and ensures that grades accurately reflect student performance.

4. Ignoring Student Input

Ignoring student input when creating rubrics can result in criteria that do not align with student understanding or priorities.

Involving students in the creation process can enhance their understanding and engagement with the rubric.

5. Failing to Update Rubrics

Rubrics should evolve to reflect changes in instructional goals and student needs.

Failing to update rubrics can result in outdated criteria that no longer align with current teaching objectives.

Regularly review and revise rubrics to keep them relevant and effective.

6. Lack of Examples

Without examples, students may struggle to understand the expectations for each performance level.

Providing annotated examples of work that meets each criterion can help students visualize what is required and guide their efforts more effectively.

7. Not Providing Feedback

Rubrics should be used as a tool for feedback, not just scoring.

Simply assigning a score without providing detailed feedback can leave students unclear about their strengths and areas for improvement.

Use the rubric to give comprehensive feedback that guides students’ growth.

8. Overlooking Self-Assessment and Peer Assessment

Self-assessment and peer assessment are valuable components of the learning process.

Overlooking these opportunities can limit students’ ability to reflect on their own work and learn from their peers.

Encourage students to use the rubric for self and peer assessment to deepen their understanding and enhance their skills.

What Is a Holistic Scoring Rubric for Writing?

A holistic scoring rubric for writing is a type of rubric that evaluates a piece of writing as a whole rather than breaking it down into separate criteria

This approach provides a single overall score based on the general impression of the writing’s quality and effectiveness.

Here’s a closer look at holistic scoring rubrics.

Key Features of Holistic Scoring Rubrics

• Single Overall Score : Assigns one score based on the overall quality of the writing.
• General Criteria : Focuses on the overall effectiveness, coherence, and impact of the writing.
• Descriptors : Uses broad descriptors for each score level to capture the general characteristics of the writing.

Example Holistic Scoring Rubric

Advantages of Holistic Scoring Rubrics

• Efficiency : Faster to use because it involves a single overall judgment rather than multiple criteria.
• Flexibility : Allows for a more intuitive assessment of the writing’s overall impact and effectiveness.
• Comprehensiveness : Captures the overall quality of writing, considering all elements together.

Disadvantages of Holistic Scoring Rubrics

• Less Detailed Feedback : Provides a general score without specific feedback on individual aspects of writing.
• Subjectivity : Can be more subjective, as it relies on the assessor’s overall impression rather than specific criteria.
• Limited Diagnostic Use : Less useful for identifying specific areas of strength and weakness for instructional purposes.

When to Use Holistic Scoring Rubrics

• Quick Assessments : When a quick, overall evaluation is needed.
• Standardized Testing : Often used in standardized testing scenarios where consistency and efficiency are priorities.
• Initial Impressions : Useful for providing an initial overall impression before more detailed analysis.

Free Writing Rubric Templates

Feel free to use the following writing rubric templates.

You can easily copy and paste them into a Word Document. Please do credit this website on any written, printed, or published use.

Otherwise, go wild.

Expository Writing Rubric

Descriptive Writing Rubric

Analytical Writing Rubric

Final Thoughts: Writing Rubrics

I have a lot more resources for teaching on this site.

Check out some of the blog posts I’ve listed below. I think you might enjoy them.

Read This Next:

• Narrative Writing Graphic Organizer [Guide + Free Templates]
• 100 Best A Words for Kids (+ How to Use Them)
• 100 Best B Words For Kids (+How to Teach Them)
• 100 Dictation Word Ideas for Students and Kids
• 50 Tricky Words to Pronounce and Spell (How to Teach Them)

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Spring 2024)
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Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper

Single-Point Rubric

More examples:

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

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Designing Rubrics

Deciding which type of rubric to use.

Rubrics are generally broken down into two types:   holistic  and  analytic .

Holistic Rubrics

A holistic rubric provides students with a general overview of what is expected by describing the characteristics of a paper that would earn an “A,” (or be marked “excellent”), a B (or “proficient”) a C (or “average”) and so on.

Here is an example of a holistic rubric for weekly reading responses in a religion course: 

As you can see, a holistic rubric gives students a sense of the criteria for evaluation (in this case: understanding of the text, engagement with the text, ability to explain significance of argument, organization & ability to answer the prompt, and grammar, mechanics & formatting).  However, it does not assign any particular value to these criteria and therefore allows more room for variation between papers of one grade.

Benefits of Holistic Rubrics:

Holistic rubrics tend to work best for low-stakes writing assignments, and there are several benefits to using a holistic rubric for evaluation:

• They allow for slightly more impressionistic grading, which is useful when papers may vary dramatically from one another.  (This particular rubric would be used to respond to one of several different prompts that students could choose from each week).
• They encourage students to think of all the parts of their writing as interconnected, so (for example) students see organization as connected to clarity of ideas.
• When used for recurring assignments, they allow students to see a trend in the feedback for their writing.
• They allow for quicker grading, since you can highlight or circle specific words or phrases to draw students’ attention to areas of possible improvement.

Drawbacks of Holistic Rubrics:

One potential drawback to holistic rubrics, however, is that it can be difficult for students to identify discrete areas for improvement or get specific examples of common missteps.

Analytic Rubrics

An analytic rubric is one that explicitly breaks down an assignment into its constitutive skills and provides students with guidelines for what each performance level looks like for each skill.

Here is an example of an analytic rubric for the same assignment:

As you can see, an analytic rubric provides students with much clearer definition of the evaluation criteria.  It may or may not assign points to each criteria.

Benefits of Analytic Rubrics: 

Analytic rubrics tend to work well for complex assignments.  There are several benefits to choosing an analytic rubric:

• They allow more specific feedback for students, which can be particularly useful in guiding revision.
• They provide students with more specific guidelines that they can follow when writing their papers.
• They provide students with a sense of your priorities for the assignment.
• They allow for more regular grading.

Drawbacks of Analytic Rubrics:

One drawback to analytic rubrics, however, is that they can be difficult to develop for assignments you’re asking students to complete for the first time; if you haven’t yet seen what can go wrong, it can be difficult to identify what poor performance might look like.

Bean, John C.  Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking,  and Active Learning in the Classroom .  San Francisco: Jossy-Bass, 2001.

“Creating and Using Rubrics.”   The Assessment Office.  The University of Hawaii at Mānoa .  18 December 2013.  Web. 1 June 2014.

“How to Develop a Rubric.”  Ohio State Writing Across the Curriculum Resources .  Ohio State University. Web. 1 June 2014.

“Rubric Development.”  Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment .  University of West Florida.  24 April 2014.  Web. 1 June 2014.

Rubric Design

Main navigation, articulating your assessment values.

Reading, commenting on, and then assigning a grade to a piece of student writing requires intense attention and difficult judgment calls. Some faculty dread “the stack.” Students may share the faculty’s dim view of writing assessment, perceiving it as highly subjective. They wonder why one faculty member values evidence and correctness before all else, while another seeks a vaguely defined originality.

Writing rubrics can help address the concerns of both faculty and students by making writing assessment more efficient, consistent, and public. Whether it is called a grading rubric, a grading sheet, or a scoring guide, a writing assignment rubric lists criteria by which the writing is graded.

Why create a writing rubric?

• It makes your tacit rhetorical knowledge explicit
• It articulates community- and discipline-specific standards of excellence
• It links the grade you give the assignment to the criteria
• It can make your grading more efficient, consistent, and fair as you can read and comment with your criteria in mind
• It can help you reverse engineer your course: once you have the rubrics created, you can align your readings, activities, and lectures with the rubrics to set your students up for success
• It can help your students produce writing that you look forward to reading

How to create a writing rubric

Create a rubric at the same time you create the assignment. It will help you explain to the students what your goals are for the assignment.

• Consider your purpose: do you need a rubric that addresses the standards for all the writing in the course? Or do you need to address the writing requirements and standards for just one assignment?  Task-specific rubrics are written to help teachers assess individual assignments or genres, whereas generic rubrics are written to help teachers assess multiple assignments.
• Begin by listing the important qualities of the writing that will be produced in response to a particular assignment. It may be helpful to have several examples of excellent versions of the assignment in front of you: what writing elements do they all have in common? Among other things, these may include features of the argument, such as a main claim or thesis; use and presentation of sources, including visuals; and formatting guidelines such as the requirement of a works cited.
• Then consider how the criteria will be weighted in grading. Perhaps all criteria are equally important, or perhaps there are two or three that all students must achieve to earn a passing grade. Decide what best fits the class and requirements of the assignment.

Consider involving students in Steps 2 and 3. A class session devoted to developing a rubric can provoke many important discussions about the ways the features of the language serve the purpose of the writing. And when students themselves work to describe the writing they are expected to produce, they are more likely to achieve it.

At this point, you will need to decide if you want to create a holistic or an analytic rubric. There is much debate about these two approaches to assessment.

Comparing Holistic and Analytic Rubrics

Holistic scoring .

Holistic scoring aims to rate overall proficiency in a given student writing sample. It is often used in large-scale writing program assessment and impromptu classroom writing for diagnostic purposes.

General tenets to holistic scoring:

• Responding to drafts is part of evaluation
• Responses do not focus on grammar and mechanics during drafting and there is little correction
• Marginal comments are kept to 2-3 per page with summative comments at end
• End commentary attends to students’ overall performance across learning objectives as articulated in the assignment
• Response language aims to foster students’ self-assessment

Holistic rubrics emphasize what students do well and generally increase efficiency; they may also be more valid because scoring includes authentic, personal reaction of the reader. But holistic sores won’t tell a student how they’ve progressed relative to previous assignments and may be rater-dependent, reducing reliability. (For a summary of advantages and disadvantages of holistic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 116.)

Here is an example of a partial holistic rubric:

Summary meets all the criteria. The writer understands the article thoroughly. The main points in the article appear in the summary with all main points proportionately developed. The summary should be as comprehensive as possible and should be as comprehensive as possible and should read smoothly, with appropriate transitions between ideas. Sentences should be clear, without vagueness or ambiguity and without grammatical or mechanical errors.

A complete holistic rubric for a research paper (authored by Jonah Willihnganz) can be  downloaded here.

Analytic Scoring

Analytic scoring makes explicit the contribution to the final grade of each element of writing. For example, an instructor may choose to give 30 points for an essay whose ideas are sufficiently complex, that marshals good reasons in support of a thesis, and whose argument is logical; and 20 points for well-constructed sentences and careful copy editing.

General tenets to analytic scoring:

• Reflect emphases in your teaching and communicate the learning goals for the course
• Emphasize student performance across criterion, which are established as central to the assignment in advance, usually on an assignment sheet
• Typically take a quantitative approach, providing a scaled set of points for each criterion
• Make the analytic framework available to students before they write  

Advantages of an analytic rubric include ease of training raters and improved reliability. Meanwhile, writers often can more easily diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of their work. But analytic rubrics can be time-consuming to produce, and raters may judge the writing holistically anyway. Moreover, many readers believe that writing traits cannot be separated. (For a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of analytic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 115.)

For example, a partial analytic rubric for a single trait, “addresses a significant issue”:

• Excellent: Elegantly establishes the current problem, why it matters, to whom
• Above Average: Identifies the problem; explains why it matters and to whom
• Competent: Describes topic but relevance unclear or cursory
• Developing: Unclear issue and relevance

A  complete analytic rubric for a research paper can be downloaded here.  In WIM courses, this language should be revised to name specific disciplinary conventions.

Whichever type of rubric you write, your goal is to avoid pushing students into prescriptive formulas and limiting thinking (e.g., “each paragraph has five sentences”). By carefully describing the writing you want to read, you give students a clear target, and, as Ed White puts it, “describe the ongoing work of the class” (75).

Writing rubrics contribute meaningfully to the teaching of writing. Think of them as a coaching aide. In class and in conferences, you can use the language of the rubric to help you move past generic statements about what makes good writing good to statements about what constitutes success on the assignment and in the genre or discourse community. The rubric articulates what you are asking students to produce on the page; once that work is accomplished, you can turn your attention to explaining how students can achieve it.

Works Cited

Becker, Anthony.  “Examining Rubrics Used to Measure Writing Performance in U.S. Intensive English Programs.”   The CATESOL Journal  22.1 (2010/2011):113-30. Web.

White, Edward M.  Teaching and Assessing Writing . Proquest Info and Learning, 1985. Print.

Further Resources

CCCC Committee on Assessment. “Writing Assessment: A Position Statement.” November 2006 (Revised March 2009). Conference on College Composition and Communication. Web.

Gallagher, Chris W. “Assess Locally, Validate Globally: Heuristics for Validating Local Writing Assessments.” Writing Program Administration 34.1 (2010): 10-32. Web.

Huot, Brian.  (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning.  Logan: Utah State UP, 2002. Print.

Kelly-Reilly, Diane, and Peggy O’Neil, eds. Journal of Writing Assessment. Web.

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web.

O’Neill, Peggy, Cindy Moore, and Brian Huot.  A Guide to College Writing Assessment . Logan: Utah State UP, 2009. Print.

Sommers, Nancy.  Responding to Student Writers . Macmillan Higher Education, 2013.

Straub, Richard. “Responding, Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing.” The Subject is Writing: Essays by Teachers and Students. Ed. Wendy Bishop. Boynton/Cook, 1999. Web.

White, Edward M., and Cassie A. Wright.  Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guide . 5th ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015. Print.

• Faculty and Staff

Assessment and Curriculum Support Center

Creating and using rubrics.

Last Updated: 4 March 2024. Click here to view archived versions of this page.

On this page:

• What is a rubric?
• Why use a rubric?
• What are the parts of a rubric?
• Developing a rubric
• Sample rubrics
• Scoring rubric group orientation and calibration
• Suggestions for using rubrics in courses
• Equity-minded considerations for rubric development
• Tips for developing a rubric
• Additional resources & sources consulted

Note:  The information and resources contained here serve only as a primers to the exciting and diverse perspectives in the field today. This page will be continually updated to reflect shared understandings of equity-minded theory and practice in learning assessment.

1. What is a rubric?

A rubric is an assessment tool often shaped like a matrix, which describes levels of achievement in a specific area of performance, understanding, or behavior.

There are two main types of rubrics:

Analytic Rubric : An analytic rubric specifies at least two characteristics to be assessed at each performance level and provides a separate score for each characteristic (e.g., a score on “formatting” and a score on “content development”).

• Advantages: provides more detailed feedback on student performance; promotes consistent scoring across students and between raters
• Disadvantages: more time consuming than applying a holistic rubric
• You want to see strengths and weaknesses.
• You want detailed feedback about student performance.

Holistic Rubric: A holistic rubrics provide a single score based on an overall impression of a student’s performance on a task.

• Advantages: quick scoring; provides an overview of student achievement; efficient for large group scoring
• Disadvantages: does not provided detailed information; not diagnostic; may be difficult for scorers to decide on one overall score
• You want a quick snapshot of achievement.
• A single dimension is adequate to define quality.

2. Why use a rubric?

• A rubric creates a common framework and language for assessment.
• Complex products or behaviors can be examined efficiently.
• Well-trained reviewers apply the same criteria and standards.
• Rubrics are criterion-referenced, rather than norm-referenced. Raters ask, “Did the student meet the criteria for level 5 of the rubric?” rather than “How well did this student do compared to other students?”
• Using rubrics can lead to substantive conversations among faculty.
• When faculty members collaborate to develop a rubric, it promotes shared expectations and grading practices.

Faculty members can use rubrics for program assessment. Examples:

The English Department collected essays from students in all sections of English 100. A random sample of essays was selected. A team of faculty members evaluated the essays by applying an analytic scoring rubric. Before applying the rubric, they “normed”–that is, they agreed on how to apply the rubric by scoring the same set of essays and discussing them until consensus was reached (see below: “6. Scoring rubric group orientation and calibration”). Biology laboratory instructors agreed to use a “Biology Lab Report Rubric” to grade students’ lab reports in all Biology lab sections, from 100- to 400-level. At the beginning of each semester, instructors met and discussed sample lab reports. They agreed on how to apply the rubric and their expectations for an “A,” “B,” “C,” etc., report in 100-level, 200-level, and 300- and 400-level lab sections. Every other year, a random sample of students’ lab reports are selected from 300- and 400-level sections. Each of those reports are then scored by a Biology professor. The score given by the course instructor is compared to the score given by the Biology professor. In addition, the scores are reported as part of the program’s assessment report. In this way, the program determines how well it is meeting its outcome, “Students will be able to write biology laboratory reports.”

3. What are the parts of a rubric?

Rubrics are composed of four basic parts. In its simplest form, the rubric includes:

• A task description . The outcome being assessed or instructions students received for an assignment.
• The characteristics to be rated (rows) . The skills, knowledge, and/or behavior to be demonstrated.
• Beginning, approaching, meeting, exceeding
• Emerging, developing, proficient, exemplary 
• Novice, intermediate, intermediate high, advanced 
• Beginning, striving, succeeding, soaring
• Also called a “performance description.” Explains what a student will have done to demonstrate they are at a given level of mastery for a given characteristic.

4. Developing a rubric

Step 1: Identify what you want to assess

Step 2: Identify the characteristics to be rated (rows). These are also called “dimensions.”

• Specify the skills, knowledge, and/or behaviors that you will be looking for.
• Limit the characteristics to those that are most important to the assessment.

Step 3: Identify the levels of mastery/scale (columns).

Tip: Aim for an even number (4 or 6) because when an odd number is used, the middle tends to become the “catch-all” category.

Step 4: Describe each level of mastery for each characteristic/dimension (cells).

• Describe the best work you could expect using these characteristics. This describes the top category.
• Describe an unacceptable product. This describes the lowest category.
• Develop descriptions of intermediate-level products for intermediate categories.

Important: Each description and each characteristic should be mutually exclusive.

Step 5: Test rubric.

• Apply the rubric to an assignment.
• Share with colleagues.

Tip: Faculty members often find it useful to establish the minimum score needed for the student work to be deemed passable. For example, faculty members may decided that a “1” or “2” on a 4-point scale (4=exemplary, 3=proficient, 2=marginal, 1=unacceptable), does not meet the minimum quality expectations. We encourage a standard setting session to set the score needed to meet expectations (also called a “cutscore”). Monica has posted materials from standard setting workshops, one offered on campus and the other at a national conference (includes speaker notes with the presentation slides). They may set their criteria for success as 90% of the students must score 3 or higher. If assessment study results fall short, action will need to be taken.

Step 6: Discuss with colleagues. Review feedback and revise.

Important: When developing a rubric for program assessment, enlist the help of colleagues. Rubrics promote shared expectations and consistent grading practices which benefit faculty members and students in the program.

5. Sample rubrics

Rubrics are on our Rubric Bank page and in our Rubric Repository (Graduate Degree Programs) . More are available at the Assessment and Curriculum Support Center in Crawford Hall (hard copy).

These open as Word documents and are examples from outside UH.

• Group Participation (analytic rubric)
• Participation (holistic rubric)
• Design Project (analytic rubric)
• Critical Thinking (analytic rubric)
• Media and Design Elements (analytic rubric; portfolio)
• Writing (holistic rubric; portfolio)

6. Scoring rubric group orientation and calibration

When using a rubric for program assessment purposes, faculty members apply the rubric to pieces of student work (e.g., reports, oral presentations, design projects). To produce dependable scores, each faculty member needs to interpret the rubric in the same way. The process of training faculty members to apply the rubric is called “norming.” It’s a way to calibrate the faculty members so that scores are accurate and consistent across the faculty. Below are directions for an assessment coordinator carrying out this process.

Suggested materials for a scoring session:

• Copies of the rubric
• Copies of the “anchors”: pieces of student work that illustrate each level of mastery. Suggestion: have 6 anchor pieces (2 low, 2 middle, 2 high)
• Score sheets
• Extra pens, tape, post-its, paper clips, stapler, rubber bands, etc.

Hold the scoring session in a room that:

• Allows the scorers to spread out as they rate the student pieces
• Has a chalk or white board, smart board, or flip chart
• Describe the purpose of the activity, stressing how it fits into program assessment plans. Explain that the purpose is to assess the program, not individual students or faculty, and describe ethical guidelines, including respect for confidentiality and privacy.
• Describe the nature of the products that will be reviewed, briefly summarizing how they were obtained.
• Describe the scoring rubric and its categories. Explain how it was developed.
• Analytic: Explain that readers should rate each dimension of an analytic rubric separately, and they should apply the criteria without concern for how often each score (level of mastery) is used. Holistic: Explain that readers should assign the score or level of mastery that best describes the whole piece; some aspects of the piece may not appear in that score and that is okay. They should apply the criteria without concern for how often each score is used.
• Give each scorer a copy of several student products that are exemplars of different levels of performance. Ask each scorer to independently apply the rubric to each of these products, writing their ratings on a scrap sheet of paper.
• Once everyone is done, collect everyone’s ratings and display them so everyone can see the degree of agreement. This is often done on a blackboard, with each person in turn announcing his/her ratings as they are entered on the board. Alternatively, the facilitator could ask raters to raise their hands when their rating category is announced, making the extent of agreement very clear to everyone and making it very easy to identify raters who routinely give unusually high or low ratings.
• Guide the group in a discussion of their ratings. There will be differences. This discussion is important to establish standards. Attempt to reach consensus on the most appropriate rating for each of the products being examined by inviting people who gave different ratings to explain their judgments. Raters should be encouraged to explain by making explicit references to the rubric. Usually consensus is possible, but sometimes a split decision is developed, e.g., the group may agree that a product is a “3-4” split because it has elements of both categories. This is usually not a problem. You might allow the group to revise the rubric to clarify its use but avoid allowing the group to drift away from the rubric and learning outcome(s) being assessed.
• Once the group is comfortable with how the rubric is applied, the rating begins. Explain how to record ratings using the score sheet and explain the procedures. Reviewers begin scoring.
• Are results sufficiently reliable?
• What do the results mean? Are we satisfied with the extent of students’ learning?
• Who needs to know the results?
• What are the implications of the results for curriculum, pedagogy, or student support services?
• How might the assessment process, itself, be improved?

7. Suggestions for using rubrics in courses

• Use the rubric to grade student work. Hand out the rubric with the assignment so students will know your expectations and how they’ll be graded. This should help students master your learning outcomes by guiding their work in appropriate directions.
• Use a rubric for grading student work and return the rubric with the grading on it. Faculty save time writing extensive comments; they just circle or highlight relevant segments of the rubric. Some faculty members include room for additional comments on the rubric page, either within each section or at the end.
• Develop a rubric with your students for an assignment or group project. Students can the monitor themselves and their peers using agreed-upon criteria that they helped develop. Many faculty members find that students will create higher standards for themselves than faculty members would impose on them.
• Have students apply your rubric to sample products before they create their own. Faculty members report that students are quite accurate when doing this, and this process should help them evaluate their own projects as they are being developed. The ability to evaluate, edit, and improve draft documents is an important skill.
• Have students exchange paper drafts and give peer feedback using the rubric. Then, give students a few days to revise before submitting the final draft to you. You might also require that they turn in the draft and peer-scored rubric with their final paper.
• Have students self-assess their products using the rubric and hand in their self-assessment with the product; then, faculty members and students can compare self- and faculty-generated evaluations.

8. Equity-minded considerations for rubric development

Ensure transparency by making rubric criteria public, explicit, and accessible

Transparency is a core tenet of equity-minded assessment practice. Students should know and understand how they are being evaluated as early as possible.

• Ensure the rubric is publicly available & easily accessible. We recommend publishing on your program or department website.
• Have course instructors introduce and use the program rubric in their own courses. Instructors should explain to students connections between the rubric criteria and the course and program SLOs.
• Write rubric criteria using student-focused and culturally-relevant language to ensure students understand the rubric’s purpose, the expectations it sets, and how criteria will be applied in assessing their work.
• For example, instructors can provide annotated examples of student work using the rubric language as a resource for students.

Meaningfully involve students and engage multiple perspectives

Rubrics created by faculty alone risk perpetuating unseen biases as the evaluation criteria used will inherently reflect faculty perspectives, values, and assumptions. Including students and other stakeholders in developing criteria helps to ensure performance expectations are aligned between faculty, students, and community members. Additional perspectives to be engaged might include community members, alumni, co-curricular faculty/staff, field supervisors, potential employers, or current professionals. Consider the following strategies to meaningfully involve students and engage multiple perspectives:

• Have students read each evaluation criteria and talk out loud about what they think it means. This will allow you to identify what language is clear and where there is still confusion.
• Ask students to use their language to interpret the rubric and provide a student version of the rubric.
• If you use this strategy, it is essential to create an inclusive environment where students and faculty have equal opportunity to provide input.
• Be sure to incorporate feedback from faculty and instructors who teach diverse courses, levels, and in different sub-disciplinary topics. Faculty and instructors who teach introductory courses have valuable experiences and perspectives that may differ from those who teach higher-level courses.
• Engage multiple perspectives including co-curricular faculty/staff, alumni, potential employers, and community members for feedback on evaluation criteria and rubric language. This will ensure evaluation criteria reflect what is important for all stakeholders.
• Elevate historically silenced voices in discussions on rubric development. Ensure stakeholders from historically underrepresented communities have their voices heard and valued.

Honor students’ strengths in performance descriptions

When describing students’ performance at different levels of mastery, use language that describes what students can do rather than what they cannot do. For example:

• Instead of: Students cannot make coherent arguments consistently.
• Use: Students can make coherent arguments occasionally.

9. Tips for developing a rubric

• Find and adapt an existing rubric! It is rare to find a rubric that is exactly right for your situation, but you can adapt an already existing rubric that has worked well for others and save a great deal of time. A faculty member in your program may already have a good one.
• Evaluate the rubric . Ask yourself: A) Does the rubric relate to the outcome(s) being assessed? (If yes, success!) B) Does it address anything extraneous? (If yes, delete.) C) Is the rubric useful, feasible, manageable, and practical? (If yes, find multiple ways to use the rubric: program assessment, assignment grading, peer review, student self assessment.)
• Collect samples of student work that exemplify each point on the scale or level. A rubric will not be meaningful to students or colleagues until the anchors/benchmarks/exemplars are available.
• Expect to revise.
• When you have a good rubric, SHARE IT!

10. Additional resources & sources consulted:

Rubric examples:

• Rubrics primarily for undergraduate outcomes and programs
• Rubric repository for graduate degree programs

Workshop presentation slides and handouts:

• Workshop handout (Word document)
• How to Use a Rubric for Program Assessment (2010)
• Techniques for Using Rubrics in Program Assessment by guest speaker Dannelle Stevens (2010)
• Rubrics: Save Grading Time & Engage Students in Learning by guest speaker Dannelle Stevens (2009)
• Rubric Library , Institutional Research, Assessment & Planning, California State University-Fresno
• The Basics of Rubrics [PDF], Schreyer Institute, Penn State
• Creating Rubrics , Teaching Methods and Management, TeacherVision
• Allen, Mary – University of Hawai’i at Manoa Spring 2008 Assessment Workshops, May 13-14, 2008 [available at the Assessment and Curriculum Support Center]
• Mertler, Craig A. (2001). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation , 7(25).
• NPEC Sourcebook on Assessment: Definitions and Assessment Methods for Communication, Leadership, Information Literacy, Quantitative Reasoning, and Quantitative Skills . [PDF] (June 2005)

Contributors: Monica Stitt-Bergh, Ph.D., TJ Buckley, Yao Z. Hill Ph.D.

Analytic vs. Holistic Rubrics: Which Type of Rubric Should You Use?

Damon Torgerson : Mar 18, 2024 10:15:00 AM

“One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.” ~Maria Montessori

Good teachers use an array of tools to assess student learning, provide feedback, and improve their teaching skills. The use of rubrics is something that has become increasingly popular – but the question is, what type of rubric should you use, and when?

The Alludo PD content catalog includes a variety of microlearning activities related to the creation and use of rubrics. One of the most important questions to ask before designing a rubric is whether to use a holistic rubric or an analytic rubric. In this post, we’ll explore the components of analytic vs. holistic rubrics, including which type is easiest to create, when to use them, and the pros and cons of each type.

Need to know more about how to create effective rubrics, then check out ' The Art of Rubric Design: Crafting Effective Assessment Tools '

Table of Contents

Advantages of holistic rubrics, disadvantages of holistic rubrics, advantages of analytic rubrics, best time to use a holistic rubric, best time to use an analytic rubric.

• Alludo's Take
• Equip Teachers in Your District to Develop Rubrics

What is a Holistic Rubric?

A holistic rubric is a rubric where all elements of a student’s work are evaluated together using a single scale. Students are assigned a point score based on an overall judgment of the work presented. There may be many elements that affect the score, but these things are not scored individually in a holistic rubric.

In general, holistic rubrics are useful when a teacher wants to grade a student’s general progress and performance and doesn’t need the specificity that would come with a different type of rubric. Holistic rubrics are typically scored on either a scale of 1-4 or a scale of 1-6. Holistic rubrics have their advantages but they’re not ideal for every assignment or situation.

Holistic rubrics can be useful for evaluating a student’s general performance and grasp of the subject matter being taught. 

Emphasize What Learners Can Do

Holistic rubrics put the emphasis on what learners can do as opposed to what they cannot. Marking a rubric by focusing on student achievement can boost learners’ confidence and help them feel good about their work while still offering room for improvement.

Easy to Create and Use

Compared to some other types of rubrics, holistic rubrics are less time-consuming to create and use because there is a single scale. Students understand that they will be given one overall point score and raters can assess the results quickly.

Consistent and Reliable

Holistic rubrics tend to have more consistent ratings than other rubrics because scores can be applied consistently by trained raters. Consistent scoring of rubrics makes scores more reliable and that’s useful to both teachers and students.

Here are some of the disadvantages of holistic rubrics.

No Place for Specific Feedback

The primary disadvantage of holistic rubrics from the perspective of learners is that there is no room for them to receive specific feedback about elements that might be scored separately with a different type of rubric. Targeted feedback helps students improve and holistic rubrics don’t provide it.

Scoring Can Be Challenging

Because scorers must assign a single score for the entire assignment, it can be difficult to nail down a single score for work that spans multiple criteria. Scorers must find a way to evaluate the work even when some areas of the student’s work are excellent and others need improvement. 

Criteria Are Not Weighted

When scoring a holistic rubric, the criteria are not weighted. The assignment must be evaluated as a whole and that can be disadvantageous because students may not understand what they’ve done well and what needs improvement. It can also make the scoring process more difficult for teachers because there’s no one-size-fits-all way to calculate an appropriate score that takes all elements of the presentation into account.

What is an Analytic Rubric?

In contrast to a holistic rubric, an analytic rubric is scored using a grid that outlines the criteria for a student assignment. Each criterion should be in a separate row and each potential score in a separate column.

The levels of student performance are typically assigned a number and may also have descriptive tags such as Above Average, Sufficient, Developing, or Needs Improvement. The cells in the center of the grid may be used to describe the details of what the criteria would look like for each potential score. 

Unlike what happens with a holistic rubric, analytic rubrics allow for the separate scoring assessment criteria. Common criteria include the following:

• Clarity : Is the thesis supported by relevant information and ideas?
• Organization : Is the information presented in a logical order that helps the presentation flow?
• Mechanics : Is the grammar and spelling correct or does it distract from the presentation?

Teachers may want to use the space in the middle of the graph to spell out details that support the score. For example, a high score in mechanics would be supported if the student made no or few spelling and grammatical errors.

Using analytic rubrics has some advantages that accrue to both teachers and students. Here are the most important advantages to consider.

Feedback on Strengths and Weaknesses

In an analytic rubric, students receive scores that reflect their individual strengths and weaknesses. Specific feedback allows students to identify areas where they need improvement and focus on them for future assignments. This feature is also useful for teachers who are able to pinpoint areas where students may need help to meet expectations.

Criteria Are Weighted

Each criterion that makes up the rubric is considered in the overall grade. A student who struggles with spelling may make up for a low score in mechanics if they do an excellent job of presenting the information in an organized manner with facts that support their thesis. Weighting criteria also makes scoring easy for teachers, particularly if the middle of the rubric grid is used to spell out what elements must be present (or missing) to earn each score.

Disadvantages of Analytic Rubrics

There are two main disadvantages to consider when designing an analytic rubric and both are important.

Time-Consuming to Create

Analytic rubrics take more time to create than holistic rubrics because they have more parts and are more complex due to the need to define and score individual elements of the student’s work. Teachers may spend time detailing the specifics of what each score means and that can be time-consuming as well.

Consistency Can Be an Issue

Consistency can be an issue with analytic rubrics unless the person creating them takes the time to define each element and the criteria to be used to judge it. Inconsistent scoring can undermine trust in the scorers.

When Should You Use a Holistic vs. Analytic Rubric?

The choice of whether to use a holistic or an analytic rubric is important because each has its uses and advantages. In most cases, the assignment itself will dictate which rubric will be most helpful in scoring students’ work.

The best time to use a holistic rubric is when creating an assignment where there is no single, correct answer or response. Your goal is to get students to think through a problem and present what they have learned and considered in a compelling way.

Said another way, holistic rubrics are most useful if you want to grade students’ work based on its overall quality or their overall understanding of concepts and information. Providing feedback based on individual criteria is less important than gauging a student’s progress and general performance.

The best time to use an analytic rubric is when you need to evaluate students’ work in multiple areas and want to assess their proficiency or progress in each.

Analytic rubrics are useful for problem-solving assignments or projects with multiple components. An example would be a student presentation that would be graded on content, language, organization, style, and other elements.

You should use an analytic rubric if you want to show students their relative strengths and weaknesses with an eye toward helping them improve where improvement is needed.

Alludo’s Take

Alludo partners with school districts around the country to help them provide dynamic and engaging professional learning for teachers, staff, and administrators. We understand that teachers who are familiar with and flexible about the type of rubric they use can work most efficiently. It’s for that reason we have included missions and micro-learning activities about rubrics in our content catalog .

In addition to including information about various types of rubrics and how to create them, we have also included activities to help teachers learn about rubric assessments and how to apply scores consistently.

In districts using the Alludo platform, teachers are engaged because we give them a voice and a choice in what they learn. By incorporating gamification and a system of rewards, we make professional development both accessible and fun.

Equip Teachers in Your District to Develop Effective Rubrics

Developing rubrics requires careful planning and an understanding of analytic vs. holistic rubrics, including the advantages and disadvantages of each. The information we’ve included here can help you determine which type of rubric is best for an assignment. 

Experience personalized learning for all levels of educators with a free trial of Alludo’s professional development platform. You’ll enjoy:

• Hundreds of core topics
• Asynchronous microlearning activities
• Timely and specific feedback
• Analytics that show learning impact
• Access anytime, anywhere

What's New in the Alludo Catalog ?

“It would take us years to roll out all the PD that we can on Alludo." - Kathy Jackson, Director of Teaching and Learning for K-12, YCJUSD

The Art of Rubric Design: Crafting Effective Assessment Tools

As educators, we've all experienced the challenge of evaluating student assignments filled with scattered ideas and jumbled thoughts, leaving us...

Holistic Rubric for History Essays

By richard w. slatta.

educational research techniques

Research techniques and education.

Types of Rubrics for Writing

Grading essays, papers and other forms of writing is subjective and frustrating for teachers at times. One tool that helps in improving the consistency of the marking, as well as the speed, is the use of rubrics. In this post, we will look at three commonly used rubrics which are…

• Primary trait

Holistic Rubric

A holistic rubric looks at the overall quality of the writing. Normally, there are several levels on the rubric and each level has several descriptors on it. Below is an example template

• idea explanation

Holistic rubrics offer the convenience of fast marking that is easy to interpret and comes with high reliability. The downside is that there is a lack of strong feedback for improvement.

Analytical Rubrics

Analytical rubrics assign a score to each individual attribute the teacher is looking for in the writing. In other words, instead of lumping all the descriptors together as is done in a holistic rubric, each trait is given its own score. Below is a template of an analytical rubric.

You can see that the levels are across the top and the descriptors across the side. Best performance moves from left to right all the way to worst performance. Each level is assigned a range of potential point values.

Below is an actual holistic writing template

Analytical rubrics provide much more washback and learning than holistic. Of course, they also take a  lot more time for the teacher to complete as well.

Primary Trait

A lesser-known way of marking papers is the use of primary trait rubric. With primary trait, the student is only assessed on one specific function of writing. For example, persuasion if they are writing an essay or perhaps vocabulary use for an ESL student writing paragraphs.

The template would be similar to a holistic rubric except that there would only be on descriptor instead of several. The advantage of this is that it allows the teacher and the student to focus on one aspect of writing. Naturally, this can be a disadvantage as writing involves more than one specific skill.

Rubrics are useful for a variety of purposes. For writing, it is critical that you understand what the levels and descriptors are one deciding on what kind of rubric you want to use. In addition, the context affects the use of what type of rubric to use as well.

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What are rubrics and how do they affect student learning?

Rubrics are scoring criteria for grading or marking student assessment. When shared before assessment, rubrics communicate to students how they will be evaluated and how they should demonstrate their knowledge and to understand their own score. As pedagogy continues to transform, It’s important to consider the history of rubrics as a context for this pedagogical moment.

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Rubrics are guidelines for student assessments, often used as scoring criteria for grading and marking student work. They are best made clear to students before an assessment; effective rubrics give students transparency into how they will be evaluated, how they should demonstrate their knowledge, what to expect on tests and assignments, and provide next steps in learning.

Rubrics also clarify any marking or grading outcomes, helping students understand why they received their particular score or grade. A good rubric promotes student learning .

In sum, rubrics make clear what counts, what defines excellent work, and uphold grading consistency so that students can succeed and learn in alignment with course expectations; they define the performance instead of judging. Rubrics, just like assessments, are best when designed to connect to learning and outcomes.

Notable pedagogist, Thomas R. Guskey, states , “Interest in rubrics surged during the 1990s as educators turned their focus to documenting student achievement of specific learning standards . Today, rubrics for describing and assessing student performance can be found at every level of education, from preschool and kindergarten to graduate and professional school.”

The history of rubrics follows the proliferation of compulsory education and learning standards. An increasing emphasis on formative assessment has further encouraged the adoption of rubrics within secondary and higher education classrooms, both in North America and East Asia ( Ragupathi & Lee, 2020 ).

Rubrics set evaluation standards that can promote fair grading practices, even across a teaching team. In the case of standardized exams, they uphold consistent marking across an even wider swath of students and graders. They are “multidimensional sets of scoring guidelines that can be used to provide consistency in evaluating student work. They spell out scoring criteria so that multiple teachers, using the same rubric for a student's essay, for example, would arrive at the same score or grade” ( Edutopia, 2018 ).

Furthermore, when students understand rubrics ahead of assessment, they understand how they will be evaluated.

In sum, effective rubrics can:

• Measure higher-order skills or evaluate complex tasks
• Clarify learning goals
• Align students to your expectations
• Foster self-learning and self-improvement in students
• Aid students in self-assessment
• Inspire better student performance
• Improve feedback to students
• Result in faster and easier scoring of assessments
• Enable more accurate, unbiased, and consistent scoring
• Reduce regrading requests from students
• Provide feedback to faculty and staff ( Suskie, 2009 , Wolf & Stevens, 2007 ).

What do effective rubrics look like? They’re more than just a checklist, but rather guidelines that focus on skills that demonstrate learning.

According to Susan M. Brookhart , there are two essential components of effective rubrics:

• Criteria that relates to the learning (and not “the tasks” )
• Performance level descriptions against a continuum of quality.

Researchers recommend two or more performance criteria with distinct, clear, and meaningful labels ( Brookhart, 2018 ) along with 3-5 quality or performance levels ( Popham, 2000 ; Suskie, 2009 ).

An example of five performance levels might look like this:

• Far Below Expectations
• Below Expectations
• Meets Expectations
• Exceeds Expectations
• Demonstrates Excellence

Criteria should center around learning, not tasks. “Appropriate criteria,” according to Brookhart’ s 2018 research , “are the key to effective rubrics. Trivial or surface-level criteria will not draw learning goals for students as clearly as substantive criteria. Students will try to produce what is expected of them.”

For example, examples of criteria might look like the following:

• The thesis sentence is present with strong analytical components and supported by the rest of the essay
• The thesis sentence is present with analytical components and supported by the rest of the essay
• Thesis sentence is present, albeit more summary than analysis, and supported by the rest of the essay
• Thesis sentence is present but not supported by the rest of the essay
• Not present

There are two main types of rubrics for evaluating student work: holistic and analytic rubrics . Each has its strengths with regard to how educators can approach evaluation of student learning. A third type of rubric is the checklist, which contains no performance descriptions, and is solely composed of criteria.

Holistic rubrics focus on the overall product or performance rather than the components. For instance, instead of dividing essay evaluation into an evaluation of thesis, supporting arguments, structure, and so forth and so on, holistic rubrics look at the entire efficacy of the essay itself. Hence, holistic rubrics would have criteria that describe competency levels of essay writing in a single scale, from “essay does not successfully argue its point with no supporting arguments and consistent writing errors” to “essay introduces original ideas with strong supporting arguments and technical writing excellence.”

A holistic rubric produces a single score based on a judgment of overall student work.

Holistic rubrics are used when missteps can be tolerated, and the focus is on general quality and what the learner can do rather than what they cannot do ( Chase, 1999 ). Oftentimes, holistic rubrics can be used when student skills are more advanced. They can also save time because there are fewer components and decisions to consider.

Because they focus on the generalized quality of student work, it may be more challenging to provide feedback on specific components. This may be challenging when, for example, a student’s work is at varying levels—for example, if an essay has original ideas, analysis, and supporting arguments but has many syntactical errors. Additionally, because holistic rubrics tend towards sweeping descriptions, scoring may be susceptible to subjectivity.

Analytic rubrics provide levels of performance for multiple criteria, with scores for separate and individual components of student work; they assess work in multiple dimensions. Analytic rubrics also provide descriptions for each of these performance levels so students know what is expected of them ( Mertler, 2001 ). Additionally, criterion can be weighted differently to reflect the importance of each component.

Because they are more comprehensive and examine different components of student work, they take more time to develop. And unless the description for each criteria is well defined, scoring may be inconsistent.

With checklist rubrics, there are only two performance levels (yes/no, present/absent, pass/fail, etc.). And a useful checklist usually has many criteria. They do enable faster grading, and a checklist provides ample clarity for students. Checklists enable an all-or-nothing approach, which is helpful at certain stages of learning. For instance, if a student is learning to write an essay, a checklist is an effective way for students to understand what they need to provide.

Oftentimes, a checklist can be converted into an analytic rubric.

Checklists are long, and may be time-consuming to create. When students are no longer new to a topic, checklists don’t provide the nuanced feedback necessary to move from conscious incompetence to conscious competence. In other words, checklists aren’t as helpful when students are “most of the way” towards competence.

A rubric is most often structured like a matrix with two main components: criteria (usually listed on the left side) and the performance descriptions (listed across the top).

Rubric development involves several steps:

• Define the purpose of an assessment
• Establish evaluation criteria
• Determine performance levels
• Provide descriptions for each performance level

Is an assignment measuring the presence of criteria or the quality of criteria?

Consider the student stage of learning in this step. When students are just beginning to write an essay or engage in geometry theorems, they are in early stages of learning. Students learning a new concept or skill may benefit from a binary approach towards whether criteria is present or not.

Students in more advanced stages of learning may benefit from being measured by a spectrum of quality.

Analytic and holistic rubrics measure the quality of criteria. Checklists or checklist rubrics measure the presence of criteria.

When developing rubrics, select the most important criteria in evaluating student work. Part of establishing criteria is asking yourself questions about what you want to identify in student work. For instance, why are you giving students this assignment? What are the characteristics of good student work? What specific skills do you want demonstrated in the assessment?

By asking yourself questions about the purpose of the assessment and how it aligns to learning objectives, you can then decide the 3-8 criteria that shows what you want students to achieve.

Determine what the performance levels should be and how many. There are usually 3-5 performance levels (qualitative), and oftentimes they are associated with scores or points (quantitative). You may want to begin with the anchors (best and worst), first before exploring how many levels you want in between. Students can often be confused by the “fuzzy” middle, so it is important to make each level distinct.

According to notable researcher Susan Brookhart, it is important to be clear and thorough in performance descriptions, which also prompt student learning. Brookhart states, “If the criterion is simply having or counting something in their work (e.g., “has 5 paragraphs”), students need not pay attention to the quality of what their work has. If the criterion is substantive (e.g., “states a compelling thesis”), attention to quality becomes part of the work” ( Brookhart, 2018 ).

For holistic rubrics, it is critical to write thorough and clear narrative descriptions of each criterion, particularly because they have to be comprehensive in describing the whole product.

For analytic rubrics, each criterion needs a description of performance level.

Language should be neutral and as objective as possible, avoiding subjective words like “interesting.” Instead, outline objective indicators like “new idea that analyzes instead of summarizes.”

Finally, consider evaluating your own rubric.

Depaul University’s Teaching Commons suggests the following questions to ask when evaluating a rubric:

• Does the rubric relate to the outcome(s) being measured?
• Does it cover important criteria for student performance?
• Does the top end of the rubric reflect excellence?
• Are the criteria and scales well-defined?
• Can the rubric be applied consistently by different scorers?

These two terms are often used interchangeably, but it is helpful to distinguish their differences. Rubrics are used to communicate student performance and expectations on assessments. Scales, on the other hand, describe how a student has progressed in their learning journey relative to stated learning goals ( University of Maryland Baltimore ).

“Rubrics with criteria that are about the task—with descriptions of performance that amount to checklists for directions—assess compliance and not learning. Rubrics with counts instead of quality descriptions assess the existence of something and not its quality,” according to Brookhart ( 2013 ).

Confusing learning outcomes with tasks can result in using rubrics as a checklist, which are often binary (e.g., “yes/no”) in nature. But rubrics that are more descriptive and reflect higher-order thinking provide students with action items, uphold assessment with integrity, and improve learning outcomes.

Rubrics that do not align to learning goals can also limit learning. Ensure that rubrics focus on core learning goals and are in alignment with course expectations. For example, if formatting margins on an essay is not a course objective but is included in rubrics, the efficacy of that rubric may be compromised. Students may confuse what it is they should do with what it is they should learn; when this occurs, once the students complete a task, they may feel their learning has ended instead of seeing learning as a continuum.

Other misperceptions include confusing rubrics with evaluative rating scales. Rating scales are useful for grading, and involve evaluations across a scale without description (e.g., 1-5, always/sometimes/never or A-F). While rating scales are useful for grading, they don’t offer students a description of quality that they can utilize as they navigate learning.

While effective rubrics can foster learning, they can be limited in scope. If, according to Angelo State University’s Instruction Design , “educators use the rubric to tell students what to put in an assignment, then that may be all they put. It may also be all that they learn.”

Wolf and Stevens, state that rubrics have more advantages than disadvantages but “If poorly designed they can actually diminish the learning process. Rubrics can act as a straitjacket, preventing creations other than those envisioned by the rubric-maker from unfolding. (“If it is not on the rubric, it must not be important or possible.”) The challenge then is to create a rubric that makes clear what is valued in the performance or product—without constraining or diminishing them” ( Wolf & Stevens, 2007 ).

Effective rubrics also take a lot of time to develop.

The formative feedback process, a core element of student-teacher communication, begins with setting expectations. Rubrics are “one way to make learning expectations explicit for learners” (Brookhart, 2018 ). These clear and explicit expectations help students see what learning looks like so that they can then absorb feedback in alignment with those learning goals.

Jay McTighe specifies that effective rubrics do the following:

• Clearly define criteria for judging student performance based on targeted standards/outcomes
• Promote more consistent evaluation of student performance
• Help clarify instructional goals and serve as teaching targets
• Provide specific feedback to learners and teachers
• Help students focus on the important dimensions of a product or performance
• Enable criterion-based evaluation and standards-based grading
• Support student self- and peer-assessment ( McTighe, 2016 ).

Rubrics give students a greater chance of achieving a clear and defined target. They guide curriculum planning and uphold accurate assessments with integrity. Effective rubrics enable self-assessment and self-directed student learning.

Effective rubrics support the student learning journey. Additionally, rubrics have the potential to advance the learning of historically marginalized students. According to Wolf and Stevens, “An often unrecognized benefit of rubrics is that they can make learning expectations or assumptions about the tasks themselves more explicit ( Andrade & Ying, 2005 ). In academic environments [sic] we often operate on unstated cultural assumptions about the expectations for student performance and behavior and presume that all students share those same understandings” ( 2007, p. 13 ). In other words, rubrics make explicit what may be too nuanced for first generation students or English learners to access.

Rubrics are, in essence, not only part of assessment but also a teaching and learning junction with the potential to increase student learning outcomes and uphold integrity. When students feel supported, their love of learning increases into a lifelong journey.

11.229 Holistic Rubric

Cherie Miot Abbanat. 11.229 Advanced Writing Seminar. Spring 2004. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

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Tag Archives: holistic rubric

Creating rubrics.

Red Rubric Marker

Instructors have many tasks to perform during the semester. Among those is grading, which can be subjective and unstructured. Time spent constructing grading rubrics while developing assignments benefits all parties involved with the course: students, teaching assistants and instructors alike. Sometimes referred to as a grading schema or matrix, a rubric is a tool for assessing student knowledge and providing constructive feedback. Rubrics are comprised of a list of skills or qualities students must demonstrate in completing an assignment, each with a rating criterion for evaluating the student’s performance. Rubrics bring clarity and consistency to the grading process and make grading more efficient.

Rubrics can be established for a variety of assignments such as essays, papers, lab observations, science posters, presentations, etc. Regardless of the discipline, every assignment contains elements that address an important skill or quality. The rubric helps bring focus to those elements and serves as a guide for consistent grading that can be used from year to year.

Whether used in a large survey course or a small upper-level seminar, rubrics benefit both students and instructors. The most obvious benefit is the production of a structured, consistent guideline for assigning grades. With clearly established criteria, there is less concern about subjective evaluation. Once created, a rubric can be used every time to normalize grading across sections or semesters. When the rubric for an assignment is shared with teaching assistants, it provides guidance on how to translate the instructor’s expectations for evaluating student submissions consistently. The rubric makes it easier for teaching assistants to give constructive feedback to students. In addition, the instructor can supply pre-constructed comments for uniformity in grading.

Some instructors supply copies of the grading rubric to their students so they can use it as a guide for completing their assignments. This can also reduce grade disputes. When discussing grades with students, a rubric acts as a reminder of important aspects of the assignment and how each are evaluated.

Below are basic elements of rubrics, with two types to consider.

I. Anatomy of a rubric

All rubrics have three elements: the objective, its criteria, and the evaluation scores.

Learning Objective Before creating a rubric, it is important to determine learning objectives for the assignment. What you expect your students to learn will be the foundation for the criteria you establish for assessing their performance. As you are considering the criteria or writing the assignment, you may revise the learning objectives or adjust the significance of the objective within the assignment. This iteration can help you hone in on what is the most important aspect of the assignment, choose the appropriate criteria, and determine how to weigh the scoring.

Criteria When writing the criteria (i.e., evaluation descriptors), start by describing the highest exemplary result for the objective, the lowest that is still acceptable for credit, and what would be considered unacceptable. You can express variations between the highest and the lowest if desired. Be concise by using explicit verbs that relate directly to the quality or skill that demonstrates student competency. There are lists of verbs associated with cognitive categories found in Bloom’s taxonomy (Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Evaluation, Analysis, and Synthesis). These lists express the qualities and skills required to achieve knowledge, comprehension or critical thinking (Google “verbs for Bloom’s Taxonomy”).

Evaluation Score The evaluation score for the criterion can use any schema as long as it is clear how it equates to a total grade. Keep in mind that the scores for objectives can be weighted differently so that you can emphasize the skills and qualities that have the most significance to the learning objectives.

II. Types of rubrics

There are two main types of rubrics: holistic (simplistic) and analytical (detailed).

Selecting your rubric type depends on how multi-faceted the tasks are and whether or not the skill requires a high degree of proficiency on the part of the student.

Holistic rubric A holistic rubric contains broad objectives and lists evaluation scores, each with an overall criterion summary that encompasses multiple skills or qualities of the objective. This approach is more simplistic and relies on generalizations when writing the criteria.

The criterion descriptions can list the skills or qualities as separate bullets to make it easier for a grader to see what makes up an evaluation score. Below is an example of a holistic rubric for a simple writing assignment.

Analytical rubric An analytical rubric provides a list of detailed learning objectives, each with its own rating scheme that corresponds to a specific skill or quality to be evaluated using the criterion. Analytical rubrics provide scoring for individual aspects of a learning objective, but they usually require more time to create. When using analytical rubrics, it may be necessary to consider weighing the score using a different scoring scale or score multipliers for the learning objectives. Below is an example of an analytical rubric for a chemistry lab that uses multipliers.

It is beneficial to view rubrics for similar courses to get an idea how others evaluate their course work. A keyword search for “grading rubrics” in a web search engine like Google will return many useful examples. Both Blackboard and Turnitin have tools for creating grading rubrics for a variety of course assignments.

Louise Pasternack Teaching Professor, Chemistry, JHU

Louise Pasternack earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Johns Hopkins. Prior to returning to JHU as a senior lecturer, Louise Pasternack was a research scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory. She has been teaching introductory chemistry laboratory at JHU since 2001 and has taught more than 7000 students with the help of more than 250 teaching assistants. She became a teaching professor at Hopkins in 2013.

Image sources: © 2014 Reid Sczerba

Holistic Scale for Grading Article Summaries

From John Bean, Engaging Ideas

A summary should be directed toward imagined readers who have not read the article being summarized. The purpose of the summary is to give these persons a clear overview of the article’s main points. The criteria for a summary are

• accuracy of content
• comprehensiveness and balance
• clarity, readability, and grammatical correctness

6-point Summary

A six-point summary meets all the criteria. The writer understands the article thoroughly. The main points in the article appear in the summary with each point proportionately developed (the writer does not spend excessive time on one main point while neglecting others). The summary is as comprehensive as possible in the space allowed, and reads smoothly, with appropriate transitions between ideas. Sentences should be clear, without vagueness or ambiguity, and free of grammatical and mechanical errors.

5-point Summary

A five-point summary is still very good, but weaker than a six summary in one area. It may have excellent accuracy and balance, but show occasional problems in sentence structure. Or it may be clearly written but be somewhat unbalanced or less comprehensive than a 6 summary, or show a minor misunderstanding of the article.

4-point Summary

A four-point summary is good but not excellent. Typically, a four summary reveals a generally accurate understanding of the article, but will be noticeably weaker in the quality of writing than a five or six. Or it may be well written but over only part of the article being summarized.

3-point Summary

A three-point summary must have strength in at least one area of competence, and it should still be good enough to convince the grader that the writer has understood the article fairly well. However, a three summary typically is not written well enough to convey an understanding of the article to someone who has not already read it. Typically, the sentence structure in a three summary is not sophisticated enough to convey the coordinate and subordinate relationships in the article.

2-point Summary

A two-point summary is weak in all areas of competence, either because it is so poorly written that the reader cannot understand the content or because the content is inaccurate or seriously disorganized. However, a two summary convinces the reader that the writer has read the article and is struggling to understand it.

1-point Summary

A one-point summary fails to meet any of the areas of competence.