Exploring Assessment Rubrics

4. The Role of Students in Rubric Development

Rubrics can be created independently by the teacher or co-constructed with students in order to encourage their engagement and raise awareness of the specific criteria (Bacchus et al., 2020).

In addition to supporting the personal development of metacognition and self-regulated learning, this knowledge and the involvement of students are important for peer assessment, in which students evaluate the work of their colleagues. The process of making a judgement about a peer’s work is complex; there are multiple aspects that the evaluator must take into consideration. Therefore, students must have a functional understanding of the rubric itself, consider and acknowledge all comments provided by the teacher, read and reread their peers’ work, and finally make a final judgement on the value of the work in relation to the given criteria (Chen et al., 2020). This process is complex even for an experienced expert, so it is not surprising that students require training and multiple opportunities to improve their judgements in peer assessment.

More on the influence of rubrics on academic achievement and self-regulated learning can be found in the paper by Panadero et al. (2023).