The role of rubrics in fostering student engagement
Dr Laura Rook and Dr Mary Papakosmas
Faculty of Business and Law (BAL)
This showcase explores how to maximise rubrics to improve student learning outcomes and enhance the student experience. Dr Laura Rook and Dr Mary Papakosmas draw on their teaching experiences, student and colleague feedback, plus their research on rubrics as they share their thorough and collaborative approach, from the process of design, through to the operationalisation of rubrics and their use in provisioning quality feedback.
Designing rubrics
Rubrics are most effective when they:
- Support students in completing the assessment (Orsmond et al., 2002; Popham, 1997; Handley & Williams, 2011)
- Enable specific feedback to be linked to the learning outcomes (Sadler, 2009; Tierney & Simon, 2004)
- Ensure transparency and clarity in expectations and grading (Bearman & Ajjawi, 2021; Dawson, 2017)
Assessments should be constructively aligned with learning outcomes (Biggs & Tang, 2011), and rubrics support this by making measurement criteria clear and transparent to students. This helps students understand why they need to complete an assessment, how their work will be evaluated, and what they need to focus on. Further, it communicates the function and value of a rubric to students and positions it as a helpful tool to engage with to support their success. As per the UDL Guidelines 3.0, designing activities that reflect a purpose that is clear to participants is key to optimise relevance, value, and authenticity (CAST, 2024). Providing students with clear expectations and well-defined, purposeful criteria for success can significantly improve the quality of assessments.
In this first video, Laura and Mary introduce themselves and Mary explores how rubrics can support clarity and transparency to scaffold student learning.
Mary: My name is Doctor Mary Papakosmas.I teach Public Relations and Communications in the School of Business.
Laura: My name is Laura Rook and I'm an academic in the School of Business in the Faculty of Business and Law. I'm currently teaching the Integrated Business Capstone, which is a final year subject that all Bachelor of Business students need to complete.
Mary: The conversations I've had with students about rubrics have been really illustrative about the good and the bad of rubrics. Many students say that they're confused by rubrics. They don't seem to make sense. They can't make a connection between the rubric and what they think the task is asking of them. And once the task is marked, the material or the comments that come back don't really help them to move forward and to build their skills.
What I'm seeking in my teaching to do is to create rubrics that are clear, that are useful and fundamentally make sense to the students, but also align to what I need to do as a coordinator in terms of meeting student learning outcomes.
I teach in 100 level subjects and 200 level subjects and especially in that 100 level subject, as students really start to experience what university expectations are as and scaffold their learning through their degree, it's very important for them to understand what subject learning outcomes are and what the expectations for each task are.
So by providing a rubric that's aligned with the task, with the subject learning outcomes and what's communicated about the subject in teaching and learning resources, students therefore have a way to understand what the expectations are because it's there in black and white and it's communicated via the teaching team in the subject.
"It’s crucial that the task aligns with the evaluation measures and that the criteria are fair and achievable. By engaging with this process, marking numerous assessments can become a more enjoyable and efficient experience. While it may initially seem like a lot of work, the benefits for all stakeholders—students and teachers—far outweigh the time and effort invested.
- Laura Rook
Operationalising rubrics - students
Having rubrics that are aligned, clear and transparently communicate expectations is an important step in using rubrics to improve student learning outcomes. Laura Rook and Mary Papakosmas highlight dedicating time in class to introducing rubrics, explicitly unpacking them and providing students an opportunity to ask questions and confirm what the expectations are is also paramount.
According to Hattie and Timperley (2007), the power of feedback can be maximised by addressing three feedback questions with students: Where am I going? How am I going? and Where to next? Well-designed rubrics which are thoughtfully introduced to students help answer that first question.
Mary Papakosmas: “I provide my rubrics on Moodle, clearly linked to assessment resources and requirements, so they are easy for students to find. That is not enough, though. I can’t expect that students will go and find it. We talk about it in class, explaining each of the criteria, clarifying expectations, discussing the best way to approach the task, creating opportunities for the students to ask questions. By making time to discuss rubrics, we are showing through our practice that rubrics matter and that they are a key resource in learning and teaching”
In the next video, Laura reflects on feedback she has received from students on rubrics and presents her approach to introducing rubrics to her students. She describes her “unpacking the rubrics” resources, providing real examples of what she covers in them as well as her rationale for how she creates and shares them with her students.
Laura: Some of the student feedback that I have received is that they're really excited to see someone tell them explicitly, this is the skill we need and this is what a good presentation looks like.
I think sometimes we can, we assume that everyone knows what a good presentation skills look like and what engaging looks like, But what does engaging with the audience really look like?
And, and how do you use your voice, like use tone, for example.
So students have a lot of fun with that because I will show them, I will role model in class.
And so I think they also find it quite funny that the lecturers may be doing things that they shouldn't do and use funny tone or looking down or, and just things like that, or even something simple as showing them what's an appropriate presentation slide.
They're like, finally someone's told me what's supposed to be there. I developed these unpacking the rubric videos, which I personally love developing.
I find it really exciting to explain to students what does that mean? So, you know, reading words on a piece of paper, sometimes you're thinking, what does that mean in practice? What is the person who's going to be marking me - What are they looking for?
So the unpacking the rubrics videos I decided to bring in because I found that students were struggling on connecting the expectations from the assessment task.
So what I do is I do a video presentation that simply breaks down into the criteria. So for example, if we're looking at an introduction, So what I would do is I would present to them, OK, this is the introduction and this is what it states in the rubric, and this is what I'm looking for.
This is what an excellent or a high distinction would look like. And this is what a fail would look like and a middle.
So I'm actually stepping out each of the essential elements within that rubric and I'll explain that to them so they can simply go and watch these videos and go, oh, that's what she means when she says excellent introduction that includes a synopsis of of the report, for example, or what's going to happen if you have something like that.
It's really, really important to explain to them, what are we looking for? You know, are you looking for a separate introduction?
Are you looking for one paragraph? Are you looking for one sentence? Students want to know.
And so I think that's really, really important that we have that unpacking process.
Now, I do it on videos so that it's can always be accessed, so students can always go back and review it.
But you could simply do that in the classroom, just with students with your Whether you do it in a lecture or in a tutorial or workshop, the important process is that you're engaging them in understanding the rubric and the feedback process.
"Integrating rubrics in learning and teaching is all about working together with students, really empowering them so they can see how each of these really important elements of their learning fit together and benefit them."
- Mary Papakosmas
Operationalising rubrics – teaching team
Another important consideration to a successful implementation of rubrics is ensuring staff are supported in their use and to ensure efficiencies and consistency in marking. Laura and Mary teach in subjects with very large student cohorts, so they have taken additional steps to maximise the power of rubrics across their teaching team. Their approach not only considers the needs of the teaching team, but helps to foster quality control measures that mean students can be confident that, regardless of the tutorial group they are working in, they will be provided fair, consist and equitable marks.
In the next video, Mary explains how she ensures objective, consistent marking across her teaching team:
Mary: When I'm talking with my teaching team about the rubrics, I'll provide resources on Moodle that are available just to the teaching team.
So a dedicated section on our Moodle site where they can find tutorial guides, their teaching resources for each week, assessment descriptions, and the rubrics themselves. And then when I release the task, when I release the rubrics, I'll email the team with expectations and descriptions so that there's a a baseline or a starting point for that discussion. I'm very conscious of their time constraints.
So then I allow them to digest that material and then follow up individually with me if they'd like more information.
Then often, particularly with final tasks, I will always moderate those tasks so that I can see that there is again, consistency across the, the task and in marking. And certainly if the task is new, I'll always moderate those tasks as well so that I can ensure that the teaching team is working together to meet those expectations and that we're all marking from a a similar baseline.
Once students have submitted their assessments, it is important that the educators use their well-designed rubrics to provide clear actionable feedback which help students understand where they currently are in their learning journey (How am I going?) and how they can improve future performance (Where to next?) (Hattie and Timperley, 2007).
In the next video, Mary describes how well-designed rubrics and thoughtful feedback can be a powerful tool for students as it shines a light on their progress towards their achievement of the expected learning outcomes.
Mary: When students are looking at the feedback that they receive, the rubric is really helpful in explaining perhaps their mark. If they have a query about their mark or a query about a comment, students also can understand that it's marked across a cohort.
It's not just their work sitting in isolation, it's their work in relation to the rubric. And everybody's work is marked to that rubric.
So if they've got a query about their analysis or a query about their writing or their presentation or their report, I can go back to the rubric and explain. These are the, the, the variability of quality across the rubric and where their work fits into that.
So therefore, they really understand what feedback means, what the comments are, and how that relates to their grade within that criteria and also their grade for the task itself.
In their practice, Laura and Mary maximise their use of rubrics and their provision of constructive feedback to celebrate students’ achievements and help them to improve their work (Where to next?). Through the design of carefully scaffolded and aligned assessments, Laura and Mary also maximise the power of their rubrics to break down complex tasks into manageable components. This allows students ample opportunity to build their skills progressively throughout the subject and more effectively achieve the learning outcomes.
Mary: I think students need to understand how important feedback is. It's not just doing the task and receiving a mark, it's also understanding what good feedback is and how that feedback really builds their strength, their skills and their academic capability.
So they should be receiving good feedback from us as coordinators, via our rubrics and via our comments in a task.
So if I'm looking at one of my public relations subjects, for example, the understanding of what critical analysis is and how to critically analyse a situation, address it, solve it, come up with strategies that make a difference to professional communication is very important.
So throughout session, the formative assessments will contribute in terms of constructive feedback, comments to broaden students understanding about what the expectations are so that when they address the final assessment task, they understand it in greater detail.
And by providing good feedback, we really build students academic feedback literacy so that they can see how they can improve, they can have expectations of themselves and they can really work towards a goal, not only within a subject or within a session, but really across their degree.
Laura: So one example where I have used a rubric as a tool to scaffold learning is through the development of presentation skills.
Presentation skills are really important for real world, for the workplace when students leave the university. And so I find it really important to use rubrics as a tool to help them with these skills.
So firstly they have a task, it's an individual task where they have to do a presentation and they're given a rubric.
Students receive feedback on that presentation. And then in class, in one of the activities, we develop a plan for the areas of improvement that were identified in that feedback process.
Later on in the session, there is an opportunity then for them to build upon and work through that plan so that they can then show me how they have improved on those presentation skills. And the same rubric is used, so it is scaffolded and but the second task is actually a group task.
So we're increasing the complexity. So they're getting the individual feedback and then they have to come together as a group and they're still working on their individual skills, but they also get to see how their group members are presenting as well.
Future plans
Laura shares her plans for continuing to design rubrics as a tool to support students in the future:
Laura: As an academic, what group work is something that we're always hearing about from students, whether that's positive or negative, we get both.
And so I really want to brainstorm the students, what a good group member, What kind of traits, characteristics, skills are we looking for here? What are we trying to get out of this process?
And so I want to workshop that with students and then hopefully build that into a rubric that they've developed, we've Co developed together. I think that's going to be a really exciting process. I understand there's a lot of red tape and process and systems that we have to go through. But with the group work, there's group work already.
It's already FEC'd, it's already accredited in there. So it's going to have to have group work and there are elements of group work that as a faculty in terms of accreditation that we have, this is what group work looks like.
But there's nothing stopping me for saying, OK, but what does that mean to students and, and the literature? Because we, we have these rubrics that say group work is there's something in there about making sure that everyone's respectful and fair.
What does that mean? You know, So what does a respectful and fair group member look like? What are you gonna do when there's conflict? So that's something that we haven't included in terms of how we're gonna tackle this conflict because we have a lot of conflict in Group work, obviously.
Advice for colleagues
"Every session I teach, I’m always reviewing, renewing and refreshing my resources, my assessments and my rubrics. It is a fundamental part of my teaching practice and it means a better experience for my students."
- Mary Papakosmas
Mary: I understand that sometimes designing a rubric can be challenging in terms of the knowledge and the skills that you may need, but also the time that it takes. But I see this as an investment in time because ultimately it's simpler in terms of marking and consistency of marking and feedback for students.
Laura: Think about the quality or the impact that you can have just by having a well designed rubric, a well designed rubric and that is clearly aligned to the task intentions can mean that you're going to get some great assessments coming through. You're going to have an enjoyable experience marking the hundreds that come through and you're going to, you know, be amazed and quite pleased when you see the expectations or the outcomes increase just from having a really well designed rubric.
It's an exciting process because you can see it before and you can see it after. And that's one of my favourite processes. And so and you can see students happy because they understand what they're engaging with. So yeah, if you're hesitant, if anything, it's just gonna be an enjoyable marking experience. That's what I would say.
Mary: So if we approach this as a, a holistic task, looking at what our subject outcomes are, what the student experiences are that we're aiming towards, it can be a process that we really build on over over sessions and you know, really create some good resources for your teaching team and for your students.
Laura: One thing that academics could do to increase the engagement with students in their assessments is to encourage them to come to you and ask about the rubrics. Encourage them to come and ask you questions about the criteria, what it means and what it means to you because they need to understand how you've interpreted it, how you understood it.
So please make that process easy for students because in my experience, students have told me they're quite hesitant to ask, they don't want to question. And so I think we need to encourage more of that questioning.
Through questioning and critical thinking, we learn. So that's one thing that I would like to encourage everyone to do.
References
Biggs, J. B. & Tang, C. S. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at university: What the student does (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill/Society for Research into Higher Education.
Bearman, M. & Ajjawi, R. (2019). Can a rubric do more than be transparent? Invitation as a new metaphor for assessment criteria. Studies in Higher Education. 46(2), 359–368. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1637842
CAST (2024). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. Retrieved from https://udlguidelines.cast.org
Dawson, P. (2017). Assessment rubrics: towards clearer and more replicable design, research and practice. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 42(3), 347–360. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1111294
Handley, K. & Williams, L. (2011). From copying to learning: Using exemplars to engage students with assessment criteria and feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 36(1), 95-108. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930903201669
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
Orsmond, P., Merry, S. & Reiling, K. (2002). The use of exemplars and formative feedback when using student derived marking criteria in peer and self-assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 27(4), 309-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/0260293022000001337
Popham, W. J. (1997). What’s Wrong – and What’s Right – with Rubrics. Educational Leadership. 55(2), 72–75.
Sadler, D.R. (2009). Transforming holistic assessment and grading into a vehicle for complex learning. In: Joughin, G. (eds) Assessment, Learning and Judgement in Higher Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8905-3_4
Tierney, R. & Simon, M. (2004). What's still wrong with rubrics: Focusing on the consistency of performance criteria across scale levels. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. 9(2).
https://doi.org/10.7275/jtvt-wg68
