The goal of this activity is to co-create a rubric with your students, for example, to assess a group assignment. This will help them to better understand the success criteria and take ownership in their learning process.
Why co-create rubrics with students?
- Engages students in an educational partnership, setting a tone of collaboration for the rest of the course.
- Provides students with an in-depth view of the assignment and the success criteria, fostering their ability to assess their own work critically.
- It encourages formative assessment: the use of the rubric becomes an opportunity for learning together rather than solely serving as a grading instrument.
- It aligns with the principles of impact-driven education by giving shape to a true “learning community”, prioritizing student agency and reflection.
- Activate prior knowledge and experience. Ask students if and how they use the rubrics you or other teachers provide and if they are helpful, or not, and why. This will set the grounds to speak in a shared language and help you to address their concerns and needs.
How to co-create rubrics with students?
1. Introduction
- Introduce your view on the use of rubrics. Explain to your students why you use a rubric, how it assists you with assessment and how it can help them in their learning process. This will help your students understand the relevance of the activity they are going to participate in and increase their engagement.
- Present the rubric you created and its main features in the context of the assignment. The goal of this activity is to adapt an existing rubric, not to create one from scratch.
2. Individual exploration
- Individually, each student reads the rubric and marks the parts that are unclear to them.
Example:
| Criterion | Doubts |
“The problem is relevant and urgent for the population”
| How can I recognize that a project is relevant? What do they mean by “urgent”?
|
3. Group brainstorming and discussion
- After the individual exploration, identify the criteria for which there are more doubts.
- On a miro board or on a big piece of paper, each criterion is written, and students paste post-it with clarifications and examples of their own. This can be done in small groups or with the whole group.
- Finally, the teacher (or a student) reads the clarifications and examples that everyone proposed. The whole group decides which ones are important and useful to include in the new rubric.
Example:
| Criterion | Clarifications and examples |
| “The problem is relevant and urgent for the population” | A problem is considered “relevant” when more than one source of information (literature review, interviews, etc.) clearly identifies the issue as a problem. A problem is considered “urgent” when the consulted participants indicate that it seriously affects one or more areas of their lives (physical health, mental health, finances, among others). An example of an urgent problem is “The families of the neighborhood don’t have access to clean water”. |
4. Test the rubric
If possible, present an assignment completed by students from a previous year. In small groups, ask the students to use the co-created rubric to assess the assignment. This can help to resolve doubts and lead to new clarifications that can be added to the co-created rubric.
- Choose an assignment that has both high scores in some elements of the rubric, as well as some low scores.
- Make sure to erase the name of the students from the previous year.
5. Share the co-created rubric
Gathering all the input from this experience, send the new co-created rubric to your students so that they can use it when working on their assignment.
6. Evaluate the activity
If possible, give the students an “exit ticket” or a small survey asking them about the usability of the rubric-cocreation activity and tips for improvement. Otherwise, you can include a question about it in the final survey at the end of the course.
References
Metropolitan State University Denver in press. https://www.msudenver.edu/early-bird/consider-including-students-in-creating-rubrics/