Introduction: The Significance of Rubrics

Abstract

Since the late twentieth century when there was a seismic shift in approaches to assessment in higher education, rubrics have become a ubiquitous tool for judging student learning. This is because rubrics are more effective for judging the quality of student learning against pre-set criteria. Prior to adopting criterion-referenced frameworks for assessing student learning outcomes, the approach to assessment in higher education was predominantly normative whereby student learning was quantitatively evaluated to enable the rank ordering of students against a statistical norm. Not only did this approach focus on what students didn’t know, it failed to acknowledge the role that assessment can play in enhancing learning. The wholescale adoption of rubrics across university faculties has been staggered and research on how rubrics were being implemented was scarce in the early days. However, scholars in the field agree that research on rubric use on higher education is increasing (Dawson, 2017) and one aim of this book is to bring together some extant research on rubric use for specific learning purposes, and in specific higher education contexts. It synthesizes the findings from several reviews of the literature around rubrics in higher education (e.g. Brookhart, 2018; Brookhart and Chen, 2015; Panadero and Jonsson, 2013; Bell, Mladenovic and Price, 2013; Reddy 2011) and juxtaposes these against some recent ideas and research in an attempt to broaden our understanding of the nuanced ways in which these tools are being used to enhance the university student learning experience.