EduCon 2025

Rubrics have grown in popularity in education for positive reasons. There are many benefits to rubrics but they could be even more powerful tools in our classrooms. One of the positives to a rubric is that it outlines for students the expectations for an assignment immediately. On the flip side, they can overwhelm students with information that may not be completely clear. Through collaborating with students to create rubrics, they will be in a better position to understand what is expected as well as increasing their autonomy over their learning. This also increases motivation as a result of their participation in creating a piece of the assignment. In this session we will discuss the pros and cons of rubrics and the challenges in including students in their creation. We will explore rubrics in different content areas and for different ages and levels. Rubrics are not always the right answer so we will discuss when they might be useful and when they are less likely to support our educational work. In addition, we will talk about the work that goes into setting students up for success in this collaborative process through analyzing rubrics together and using rubrics for peer review, for two examples. Finally, we will spend some time planning for how to implement this practice in our own classrooms and schools.