A rubric establishes the categories that are important components of a completed work. These categories help establish a set of scoring guidelines for evaluating projects. Rubrics answer the questions: By what criteria should performance be judged? Where should we look and what should we look for to judge performance success? What does the range in the quality of performance look like? How do we determine validly, reliably, and fairly what score should be given and what that score means? How should the different levels of quality be described and distinguished from one another?
A typical rubric:
1. Contains a scale of possible points to be assigned in scoring work, on a continuum of quality. High numbers usually are assigned to the best performances: scales typically use 4, 5 or 6 as the top score, down to 1 or 0 for the lowest scores in performance assessment.
2. Provides descriptors for each level of performance to enable more reliable and unbiased scoring.
3. Is either holistic or analytical. If holistic, a rubric has only one general descriptor for performance as a whole. If analytic, there are multiple rubrics corresponding to each independent dimension of performance being scored.
4. Is generic, genre, or task specific. If generic, it can be used to judge a very broad performance, such as communication or problem solving. If genre specific or task specific, it applies to a more specific type of performance within the broad performance category
5. May be longitudinal. It measures progress over time toward mastery of objectives such that we assess developmental change in sophistication or level of performance.
Resources:
http://www.relearning.org/resources/PDF/rubric_sampler.pdf