How can you design a rubric that meets your program's goals?

Determine what you want students to achieve, such as mastering skills or understanding concepts. Design the rubric with specific criteria aligned to these goals, ensuring it provides a clear framework for assessment. Make it flexible enough to accommodate different learning styles and abilities while still offering meaningful feedback. By aligning the rubric with your program's objectives, you can effectively assess students' progress and provide guidance for improvement.

Identifying goals and objectives is one of the most important steps when designing a working rubric. To better understand the goals that students can achieve, it is also important to understand the level of the students you are designing the rubric for. Once we have an idea about the students' starting level, we can better tailor the goals of the program so that it becomes easier for students to reach from the start to the finish.

1. Start by revisiting your program's mission statement to understand its overarching purpose and guiding principles. 2. Reflect on the core values that underpin your program's philosophy and behaviors you seek to cultivate in your students. 3. Conduct surveys, focus groups, or interviews to solicit feedback and insights from key stakeholders regarding their expectations and priorities for student learning outcomes. 4. Review relevant industry standards, accreditation requirements, and professional expectations within the discipline or field of the target audience. 5. Identify the competencies, skills, and knowledge areas that are essential for success in the profession or industry for the students.

1. Reflect on how each component of the admissions process can serve as evidence of an applicant's alignment with these goals. 2. List the different types of work or evidence that you require or accept from applicants. 3. Evaluate how each component measures or demonstrates the applicants' readiness, potential, and fit for your program. For example - What insights into applicants' personal motivations, values, and aspirations can be gleaned from their essays or statements? In what ways do resumes or CVs provide evidence of applicants' academic achievements, professional experiences, and leadership qualities? To what extent do test scores reflect applicants' aptitude for the academic rigor of the program?

In order to build a successful program, we need to define the parameters of this success. Based on these outcomes, you will need to outline the components needed to determine where the student stands in relation to the program. You should also consider how each component contributes to the whole picture. It is also helpful to see how components can provide evidence for others like CVs.

Not defining the standard for each component is like not having a movie rating system. For a student's program to be successful as a whole, it is important that each component should also be successful in itself. As each component serves to provide evidence of different parts of a student's profile, one set of standards cannot be considered. For eg., while you would want the portfolio to showcase creativity, you would want the resume to be short and highlight the main points.