Evaluation

 

Process

Types of rubrics: Holistic scales

In holistic evaluation, raters make judgments by forming an overall impression of a performance and matching it to the best fit from among the descriptions on the scale. Each band on the scale describes performance on several criteria (e.g., range of vocabulary + grammatical accuracy + fluency). Four or six levels of performance are commonly found in holistic rubrics. Holistic scales may be either generic or task-specific. Large-scale assessments are often evaluated holistically, but teachers find holistic rubrics easy and efficient to use for classroom assessment as well.

Figures 1a-d present two holistic rubrics for speaking tasks (both generic) and two holistic rubrics for writing tasks (one generic, one task-specific). Click the icon at left to open a new window displaying Figures 1a-d.

Advantages:

• They are often written generically and can be used with many tasks.
• They emphasize what learners can do, rather than what they cannot do.
• They save time by minimizing the number of decisions raters must make.
• Trained raters tend to apply them consistently, resulting in more reliable measurement.
• They are usually less detailed than analytic rubrics and may be more easily understood by younger learners.

Disadvantages:

• They do not provide specific feedback to test takers about the strengths and weaknesses of their performance.
• Performances may meet criteria in two or more categories, making it difficult to select the one best description. (If this occurs frequently, the rubric may be poorly written.)
• Criteria cannot be differentially weighted.

[Tedick (2002), Mueller (2002), and TeacherVision.com (2000-2002).]