Rubric-based assessment of the productive skills

Abstract

Assessment is used for multiple purposes. We use tests to make decisions about the test-takers, programs, organizations, and sometimes even tests themselves. These decisions can have far-reaching consequences for the stakeholders. This consequently dictates taking certain precautions to avoid any unintended consequences. The measures we take to ensure the quality of what we administer as tests as well as the instruments we employ to obtain scores that are intended to represent the construct in question require meticulous preparation, planning, and revising. One such instrument which guarantees a more consistent method of collecting data to be used as the basis for fair inferences of the test scores is a rubric. We believe that developing a rubric is an iterative process and its developers and users should be held accountable for its planning, drafting, revising, and assessing process. In this chapter, we will present four stages when developing rubrics for assessment purposes. We will further discuss the steps taken at each stage of the process.