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Rubrics

As an RDN, I teach a two-day culinary class with a chef.  The course is divided into two distinct parts, classroom and culinary labs.  I teach the classroom instruction and the chef teaches the labs. When the students started the labs, I noticed that some students were not practicing proper food safety sanitation and struggled with demonstrating basic culinary and nutrition knowledge covered earlier that day. So, I developed a culinary lab rubric for one of the labs and incorporated a learning assessment technique that I thought would address the learning gap observed in the class.  See the examples below.

Rubrics

There are many assessment tools that we can use as instructors.  A handy tool available to instructors is a rubric.   A rubric is a scoring assessment tool that clearly describes the performance expectations and can be used in a wide variety of instructional environments. Rubrics consist of 4 main parts:
  •  Task description-what students are expected to produce/know/do.
  •  Scale (scoring system)-describes the level of mastery (e.g., excellent, good, fair, needs improvement). 
  • Components/dimensions-what students are to do to complete the tasks/assignments (e.g., types of skills, knowledge, behaviors).
  • Description of the performance quality of the components at each mastery level.
Why Use Rubrics?  Rubrics make accessing the quality of a student's work more objective, consistent, and quick. They provide students with immediate feedback that is clear, focused, and directed on ways to improve.  Students know exactly what to expect and how instructors will evaluate them. Rubrics define what quality looks like to the student.  As a result, instructors can be more consistent in how they assess all learners. For more information on rubrics, see the link.
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