Understand your marking rubric
Want to improve your grades? Start by understanding how your work will be marked. Every assessment task comes with a marking guide or rubric. These documents set out the assessable components of each task, and assign numerical grades to each part. This page explains how marking guides and rubrics work.
Every assessment comes with two pieces of information:
- instructions outlining what you need to do, and
- marking criteria
Marking criteria are usually provided in the form of a rubric or marking guide. These convey how you will be assessed.
For students
Marking criteria provide students with clear guidelines for the skills, knowledge or abilities they are being asked to demonstrate within a specific assessment task. Marks cannot be awarded or detracted for any other element or reason than those articulated within the criteria.
For lecturers
Marking criteria provide lecturers with guidelines for how to relate the work you have submitted to the marks they are awarding. In theory, this makes assessment less subjective and more objective, and consistent across students. The way marks are allocated also becomes transparent using marking criteria, because lecturers are awarding marks against elements that are specific and articulated.
About rubrics and marking guides
Marking guides provide a range for the marks that can be awarded for a given task, whereas rubrics specify a specific point value for each element of an assessment task.
A marking guide presents broad expectations for the skills or knowledge that need to be demonstrated, and it provides a numerical range for awarding marks.
For example:
- Excellent 8-10
- Good 5-7
- Needs Improvement 6-4
- etc
Use the marking guide to determine what you are being asked to demonstrate through the assessment task. Once marked, the guide helps you see where your skills, knowledge or abilities need improvement.
Lecturers can use the marking guide to determine whether, and how effectively, a submitted assignment meets the requirements of the task. They will award marks on that basis.
Rubrics present specific and detailed expectations for the skills or knowledge that need to be demonstrated, providing a specific point value for each element of an assessment task.
For example:
- Excellent 5
- Substantial 4
- Moderate 3
- Minimal 2
- Poor 1
- Unsatisfactory 0.
You can use a rubric in the same way that lecturers use them: to understand what is required in each assessment, and to determine whether you are meeting those standards in your work.