Rubrics guide learning because they define multiple criteria and for each criterion, they define multiple levels of skill or knowledge. Therefore, it becomes clear for both the assessing person and the assessed, how to attain each level.

Teacher Esteban Menéndez Mozo used a simple solution called CoRubrics: a Google Sheets plug-in that allows for an evaluation as defined by the rubric designer. According to teacher Esteban, analysing the key competences and basic skills (personal and social) and learning to learn is fundamental in education. Students are active agents, protagonists and co-responsible for their own learning, which includes planning activities, monitoring and self-assessment of learning. 

Evaluation by rubric helps a lot when planning the activities or exercises during the teaching process. When preparing and writing the rubrics, Esteban takes the curriculum into account. This helps to focus on the evaluation criteria and the different indicators of the rubric.

At the beginning of the unit or topic, he gives students the rubric, therefore they know what aspects are going to be assessed and what is expected from them. The results obtained with the tool also allow to reflect and compare the teacher's grade and the students' perception.

From sports to language and mathematics, rubrics can be used for any subject. Esteban uses CoRubrics in physical education classes. One of the assessment criteria in the Physical Education curriculum is to self-assess the level of the physical activity/game with the help of technical forms and also assess peers.

Teacher Esteban uses the method Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU, video in English). TGfU aims to involve students in the design of their own activities after having practiced the different techniques in previous sessions proposed by the teacher. Teacher Esteban used this strategy to teach volleyball. 

The teacher uses visuals (graphics) to explain specific sports moves, which is frequently used by physical education teachers to better understand different actions and autonomously work on sports tasks. 

In the first activity, students formed groups of 6-8 and interpreted an exercise graphic (Figure 1), while organising the material and their classmates. One of the students took the role of the observer and noted and corrected his teammates doing the exercises. For example, when doing a “low serve” in volleyball, the observer paid attention to whether the player puts forward his/her leg that is opposite to the hand that hits the ball, fully stretches the striking arm and hits the ball with the top of the hand.

Finally, the observer assessed them using a specific rubric created by the teacher. The observer role was then passed on to another student. This rotation process that can be done up to 4 times within a single lesson hour. Throughout and during the sessions, the teacher asked questions to verify that students understood the game.

In the second activity, students worked in groups to design their own graphic to practice technical and tactical topics. These graphics were then carried out by another group of students. In the end, students must perform both self -and peer assessment. 

Figure 1 An example graphic to guide the observer to observe a volleyball finger touch drill. “A” and “B” the initial position of the student players. The players need to flex their arm and knees to get a push while hitting the ball.

Esteban used CoRubrics in two different ways: 

• Primary school students could do self-assessment and peer assessment. The teacher sent the rubric sheet by email, and students responded at home from their devices, mostly via their smartphones. It counted for the final note that they filled in the rubric.
• Secondary school students could do all forms of assessment including assessment of their teacher and help to design the rubric. Secondary school students (12-16) and students of the 1st Spanish Baccalaureate completed the self-assessment and peer assessment in a computer room that had 15 mini-portables. As the classes had 25 students and in secondary school, 27, the teacher had to do two batches.

Steps involved in the process were:

1. Installation of the add-on app, creating 3 spreadsheets: rubric, students and teachers.
2. Editing rubric and the weights for each item.
3. Sending the rubric to the students.
4. The tool generates reports (Figure 3) indicating who completed the evaluation, what is the item with the lower grade, the weighted averages for each indicator (self-assessment, peer assessment and teacher’s assessment) and the global grade according to the weight given to each indicator. 

Figure 2 An example CoRubrics report

To learn how to use the tool and access figures, check out this companion website (English) or the page of INTEF (Spanish). Click here for an installation guide and a tutorial (Spanish). 

• How to edit the rubric:
  • Setting items: Once an empty template has been created, through the “Rubric” sheet you can edit the rubric itself: the number of items (rows) to evaluate, change the graduation of the items (Excellent, Good, Regular, Basic) or give it a numerical score (1,2,3,4 ...). It is also possible to add colours to the cells to make them more intuitive.
  • Assigning percentage weights: In the same sheet, it is possible to set the percentage of each item. For instance, if 4 items will be used, they can all have the same percentage (25%) or different weights (e.g. 35, 15, 25, 25%).
  • The student sheet: This is where the names and emails of students are filled in. The list can be copied from another spreadsheet. A Google form can be used to collect this information at the beginning of the course in which you request name and email address.
  • The teacher´s sheet is where the teacher or teacher’s data who are going to evaluate the rubric are placed.

If students need to go for a hybrid teaching setting, observer students can connect online and observe the drills of the player students. The drills can also be pre-recorded and sent to observers through a file-sharing platform or a digital classroom management tool. The rubric can be used in a blended setting easily; students can collaboratively work on the rubric that is a sheet saved online.

Teacher Esteban recommends splitting students into groups to work on writing the designated rubric items only. The teacher can distribute the different items among the groups to adapt them to the different levels of mastery (Excellent, Good, Regular, Basic).

Alternatively, the teacher can give the same item to each group. Each group will then adapt the same item to different levels of development. At the time of writing and adapting the items to the different levels of development, it is highly recommended to start at the level of "Excellent" and then write "Basic" leaving the medium levels for the last. The teacher can then project the work done by the different groups to the whole group to read and discuss. The final assessment requires 15 minutes for students to access their email and complete the rubric. The school policy on students’ own device usage must be considered. Alternatively, evaluation can be sent by e-mail to the students for completion at home. Rubrics are recommended for tasks where students must create a deliverable like an essay, presentation or a team project. 

Students react positively to this tool, find it useful for their self-assessment, and also simple to use. A common challenge is that they feel a little uncomfortable because of the responsibility of assessing their friends. The biggest impact is on students’ self-reflection and learning-to-learn skills. Although they are not used to assessing and grading classmates, co-designing rubrics increase their motivation and participation in class. Self-assessment and peer-assessment increase their responsibility and commitment in class, especially when working in groups. Students with low self-esteem or disruptive behaviour can better recognise and change the actions they must modify.

CoRubrics is a Google Sheets application allowing an integral evaluation by rubric as defined by its developer Jaume Feliu (@jfeliua), an ITC teacher in Salas i Xandri (Sant Quirze del Vallès). Both teachers and students need a Gmail account for the tool, preferably not a personal account but an account they use for school applications only.

CoRubrics automatically creates three Google sheets: (1) a rubric template; (2) a list for students’ names and emails; (3) a list of teachers and their contacts. The emails can be collected from Google Classroom or through an online survey. The list of teachers enables multiple teachers to easily collaborate on the same rubric.

The teacher can apply different “weights” to each item, which makes them contribute differently to the overall grade. One can get the final grade for each row, which depends on the weight distribution given to peer assessment, self-assessment and teacher´s assessment (Figure 3). 

The tool shows which item (or which student) scored lowest; therefore the teacher can target that item/indicator or student. The outcome is a spreadsheet where a quantitative evaluation is translated into a qualitative one. Student results can be easily compared and shared with them. 

Figure 3 An observation sheet and rubric used for cooperative volleyball with four different exercises to observe.