The rubric as a moderating tool in tertiary contexts

[Excerpt] The trend towards greater accountability and transparency in assessment practices across all levels of education has resulted in a range of procedures and the production of artifacts to meet these ends. Rubrics are an outcome of this trend and now serve as a critical aid for judging the quality of student work in tertiary education, and in justifying grades given to students. Rubrics—when they are constructed well and identify the criteria and expected standard of a performance—are a means to valid, reliable, equitable, and fair assessment practices, and provide a framework for students to reflect on their learning and establish next-step goals (Andrade, 2005; Watty et al. 2014). However, rubrics with the associated criteria that identify what students should know and do have been criticized as normalizing student responses and restricting their creativity (Crossouard, 2011; Torrance, 2007); they have also been criticized for being able to measure only quantifiable features and so are unable to capture the critical connection between criteria that produce cohesiveness in a response (Sadler, 1985, 2009). Torrance (2007, p. 292) refers to this practice as “a convergent focus on criterion attainment and award accrual”. On top of these criticisms are claims that students do not necessarily refer to the rubric to guide their response (Sinclair & Cleland, 2007). Hardly surprising is that determining the means to transparency and fairness in assessment, as well as allowing for creativity in response, is an area of ongoing debate and research endeavor.