Write Effective Rubrics

Effective rubric design is key to encouraging students to provide constructively critical reviews and producing assignments with strong Reliability Ratings.

In Peerceptiv, a Reviewing Dimension is a conceptual element for that assignment, and is made up of one Commenting Prompt for qualitative feedback and at least one Rating Rubric for quantitative feedback.

This article discuses

• How to Add Reviewing Dimensions
• Tips for Creating Reviewing Dimensions

How to Add Reviewing Dimensions

In Peerceptiv, Commenting Prompts (for qualitative feedback) and Rating Prompts (for quantitative grading) are grouped together into Reviewing Dimensions so students are better able to understand the underlying concept.

To add a reviewing dimension, when you are on the Assignment Dimensions page, click Add a Dimension. On the next page, add a short name for the dimension and click the Add a comment and Add a rating buttons to add each prompt.

In each case, you may add a comment or a rating manually, select them from the Shared Assignment Library (Add from library), or select them from My Library, which includes all prior Commenting and Rating prompts you used in the past.

Add a Comment

If you click on Add a Comment to add a commenting prompt manually, you will then:

1. Enter the complete instructions for what is expected of the student on that dimension.
2. Add the required number of comments, which may be ’1′ or more.
3. Enter the maximum number of comments, as one of the objectives of the review is to make those comments as succinctly as possible. The Maximum Entries selection controls the number of text boxes that appear on the reviewing screen for the Reviewing Dimension. We recommend having only one required comment in each dimension.
4. When complete, click the Create button and the Commenting Prompt is created.

Add a Rating Prompt

Next, add a Rating Prompt.

1. Since there may be more than one Rating Prompt in each Dimension, enter a short name.

2. Then include a complete prompt description to guide the students in their ratings.

3. Next, please include your performance level descriptors. If you wish to exclude a performance level, simply leave it blank. NOTE: Some instructors leave “middling” performance levels in their rubric with no descriptors. This allows for students to choose a score that is in between two descriptors.

4. Select the relative weighting for each Rating Prompt. The default is 1 for all Rating Prompts. If you set the weight of a prompt to 2, for example, that Rating Prompt will be worth twice as much as any that are set to 1.

5. Click the create button when finished.

6. You may change the order the Rating Prompts appear by dragging and dropping them on the screen.

Tips for Creating Reviewing Dimensions

Keep the following in mind as you design the Rating Rubric and create your Rating Anchors.

1. Encourage a spread of ratings across the scale, making it truly difficult for students to justify the highest rating in the rubric.
2. Use concrete terms (e.g. The paper provides necessary definitions clearly and consistently) rather than generic descriptors (e.g., Good, Poor) in your Rating Rubrics.
3. Each Rating Prompt should represent a single course concept or principle for assessment. It is better to have two different Rating Prompts when having students assess two different features of the assignment.
4. If you leave a middling entry blank, the scale will omit that level entirely. For example, if you only put values in 1,3,5,7 with the rest blank, then students will have a 4-point scale.
5. Use a spread of ratings across the scale. You can choose any spread of ratings between 1 and 10.  Best practices recommends at least three rating levels for each rating prompt.

Writing an effective Rubric within the Peerceptiv framework is critical to your success while using this tool. We offer additional personalized support to instructors as they create rubrics. Please, reach out to Peerceptiv Support for this free rubric support.