Foundation Skills/Developing an assessment/Using marking schedules and rubrics

Using marking schedules and rubrics
The Collins Online Dictionary defines a marking scheme (or marking schedule) as:


 * "(education) a plan or guidelines used in the marking of school children's or students' written work by teaching staff"

The marking scheme gives an indication of the mark allocation for various aspects of an assessment task (usually a task that has a low objectivity of scoring, such as an essay). The use of a marking scheme gives students an indication of what will count for marks, which aspects of the assessment task carry more weight and can also enable students to be more focused. For teachers, the use of a marking scheme increases the reliability of the assessment task. Examples of simple marking schemes can be found on page 2 of the resource Preparing examination questions (essays). The marking scheme does not usually indicate how an assessor will make judgements.

Andrade defines a rubric as:


 * "... a scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work, or “what counts” (for example, purpose, organization, details, voice, and mechanics are often what count in a piece of writing); it also articulates gradations of quality for each criterion, from excellent to poor."

So, a rubric, in addition to providing the criteria (or aspects) that count for marks, also indicates how the teacher (assessor) will arrive at a judgement (and a mark) for each criterion (or aspect). See Figure 1 in Andrade's article Rubrics for an example of a rubric used to grade reports on student inventions. The Andrade article also provides a rationale and tips for creating rubrics.