rubrics for science project presentation

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

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Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper, single-point rubric, more examples:.

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

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Science Rubrics

Exemplars science material includes standards-based rubrics that define what work meets a standard, and allows teachers (and students) to distinguish between different levels of performance.

Our science rubrics have four levels of performance: Novice , Apprentice , Practitioner (meets the standard), and Expert .

Exemplars uses two types of rubrics:

• Standards-Based Assessment Rubrics are used by teachers to assess student work in science. (Exemplars science material includes both a general science rubric as well as task-specific rubrics with each investigation.)
• Student Rubrics are used by learners in peer- and self-assessment.

Assessment Rubrics

Standards-based science rubric.

This rubric is based on science standards from the National Research Council and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

K–2 Science Continuum

This continuum was developed by an Exemplars workshop leader and task writer, Tracy Lavallee. It provides a framework for assessing the scientific thinking of young students.

Student Rubrics

Seed rubric.

This rubric is appropriate for use with younger children. It shows how a seed develops, from being planted to becoming a flowering plant. Each growth level represents a different level of performance.

What I Need to Do

While not exactly a rubric, this guide assists students in demonstrating what they have done to meet each criterion in the rubric. The student is asked in each criterion to describe what they need to do and the evidence of what they did.

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating and using rubrics.

A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly describes the instructor’s performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric identifies:

• criteria: the aspects of performance (e.g., argument, evidence, clarity) that will be assessed
• descriptors: the characteristics associated with each dimension (e.g., argument is demonstrable and original, evidence is diverse and compelling)
• performance levels: a rating scale that identifies students’ level of mastery within each criterion  

Rubrics can be used to provide feedback to students on diverse types of assignments, from papers, projects, and oral presentations to artistic performances and group projects.

Benefitting from Rubrics

• reduce the time spent grading by allowing instructors to refer to a substantive description without writing long comments
• help instructors more clearly identify strengths and weaknesses across an entire class and adjust their instruction appropriately
• help to ensure consistency across time and across graders
• reduce the uncertainty which can accompany grading
• discourage complaints about grades
• understand instructors’ expectations and standards
• use instructor feedback to improve their performance
• monitor and assess their progress as they work towards clearly indicated goals
• recognize their strengths and weaknesses and direct their efforts accordingly

Examples of Rubrics

Here we are providing a sample set of rubrics designed by faculty at Carnegie Mellon and other institutions. Although your particular field of study or type of assessment may not be represented, viewing a rubric that is designed for a similar assessment may give you ideas for the kinds of criteria, descriptions, and performance levels you use on your own rubric.

• Example 1: Philosophy Paper This rubric was designed for student papers in a range of courses in philosophy (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Psychology Assignment Short, concept application homework assignment in cognitive psychology (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 3: Anthropology Writing Assignments This rubric was designed for a series of short writing assignments in anthropology (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 4: History Research Paper . This rubric was designed for essays and research papers in history (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 1: Capstone Project in Design This rubric describes the components and standards of performance from the research phase to the final presentation for a senior capstone project in design (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Engineering Design Project This rubric describes performance standards for three aspects of a team project: research and design, communication, and team work.

Oral Presentations

• Example 1: Oral Exam This rubric describes a set of components and standards for assessing performance on an oral exam in an upper-division course in history (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Oral Communication This rubric is adapted from Huba and Freed, 2000.
• Example 3: Group Presentations This rubric describes a set of components and standards for assessing group presentations in history (Carnegie Mellon).

Class Participation/Contributions

• Example 1: Discussion Class This rubric assesses the quality of student contributions to class discussions. This is appropriate for an undergraduate-level course (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Advanced Seminar This rubric is designed for assessing discussion performance in an advanced undergraduate or graduate seminar.

See also " Examples and Tools " section of this site for more rubrics.

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Home > Resources > Group presentation rubric

Group presentation rubric

This is a grading rubric an instructor uses to assess students’ work on this type of assignment. It is a sample rubric that needs to be edited to reflect the specifics of a particular assignment. Students can self-assess using the rubric as a checklist before submitting their assignment.

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Download Project Based Learning Rubrics

We've created a wide range of rubrics - for designing and teaching PBL to guiding students through key stages of the PBL process. 

All of our resources – rubrics, project ideas, student handouts, videos, and more – are available at My.PBLWorks.org . You can download over 25 different rubrics there!

Go to MyPBLWorks.org for all rubrics

Below are some of the most popular rubric downloads. 

Project Based Teaching Rubric

This rubric describes beginning, developing, and Gold Standard levels for Project Based Teaching Practices for K-12 teachers and features detailed, concrete indicators that illustrate what it means to teach in a PBL environment.

Teachers and school leaders can use this rubric to reflect on their practice and plan for professional growth.

Download here

Rubric for Rubrics

This rubric describes a well-written rubric, distinguishing between rubrics that meet, approach, or are below standards for selection of criteria, distinction between levels, and quality of writing. It also describes how a rubric is created and used with students.

Project Design Rubric

The Project Design Rubric uses the Essential Project Design Elements as criteria to evaluate projects. The rubric aligns with BIE's Gold Standard PBL model. Definitions and practical examples are used to clarify the meaning of each dimension.

You and your colleagues can use the rubric to guide the design of projects, give formative feedback, and reflect and revise.

Grades 9-12 Presentation Rubric

This rubric helps teachers guide students in grades 9-12 in making effective presentations in a project, and it can be used to assess their performance. 

Use this rubric to guide students and assess their work, or to inform your thinking as you create your own assessment tools. Schools and districts can adopt or adapt this rubric for use across all classrooms.

Grades 6-12 Creativity & Innovation Rubric

The first part of this rubric helps teachers guide students in grades 6-12 in using an effective process for innovation in various phases of a project, and it can be used to assess their performance. 

The second part of the rubric can be used to assess the degree of creativity shown in the products students create in a project.

Yes, we provide PBL training for educators! PBLWorks offers a variety of PBL workshops, courses and services for teachers, school and district leaders, and instructional coaches - whether you're just getting started or advancing your practice. Learn more

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Science Rubric Makers

• Class Participation Rubric Generator - A great way to keep students on task! This can be used in a group setting or for individual assignments.
• Clean Up/ Changing Activities Rubric - This tool allows you to make a rubric to help with assessing student's transitioning skills.
• General Rubric Generator - This tool allows you to make your own customized rubric. The application includes an extensive number of fields to enter.
• Homework Rubric Generator - Help your students understand your expectations for homework assignments with this rubric.
• Lab Report Rubric Generator - Science teachers, make your expectations clear to students with this fun standards-based rubric. Very easy to use.
• Listening Rubric Generator - This tool will help you assess how well students listen during periods of teacher/student readings.
• Notebook Rubric Maker - This rubric is a wonderful tool to help you evaluate student oral projects of any kind. Includes the use of visuals, articulation, and presentation.
• Oral Expression Rubric Generator - A wonderful tool to help you evaluate student oral projects of any kind.
• Presentation Rubric Generator - Decrease the pressure on your students by sharing this rubric of your expectations. This assessment tool will help your students focus on the content they are presenting.
• Project Rubric Generator - This generator can be used to help you assess student projects. Helpful for group work and/or individual class projects.
• Research Report Rubric Maker - This rubric is perfect for any research based body of writing. Has criteria for writing and information gathering.
• Science Fair Rubric Generator - A rubric that assesses a variety of qualities of science fair projects.
• Team Work Rubric Generator - This rubric can help you assess how students work cooperatively in a group setting.
• Web Quest Rubric Maker - If you're using web quests in your classes and having a hard time evaluating your students, this rubric is for you!

Project grading rubric

Dsfe 2018 project grading rubric.

Your total project mark is out of 100. This mark in turn makes up 70% of your course grade.

There are two components to this assessment: the project and your contribution. 72% of the project marks are for the project itself; see the categories below.

28% of the marks are for your contribution; see heading below.

Project grades

Each of the following 8 sections is worth 9 marks, for a total of 72.

For each row, the table gives a description of work that will earn: between 0 and 50% in this category (fail to bare pass); 50-75% (bare pass to good pass); and 75-100% (good pass to excellent).

Notice that your project presentation is one category; see the project page for schedule.

Project report

Your project report should be around 3000 words of explanatory text and code, not including figures and tables.

It can be in the form of a PDF document, or a Jupyter Notebook.

Your project report should be reproducible . There should be a file in your project, called README , in any format of your choosing. For example, the file can be in plain text format, a Jupyter Notebook, or a Word-processor document.

This file should give the steps which will exactly reproduce the numbers, tables and figures in your report.

Example instructions for a simple report might be:

The UK police publish various statistics about their work at https://data.police.uk/data . Go to this site, select “August 2018” as the start and end of the “Date range”, select “West Midlands” in the “Forces” panel, unselect “include crime data” and select “include stop and search data”. Download and unpack the generated zip file, to give the file 2018-08-west-midlands-stop-and-search.csv . This should exactly match the copy of the data in our project directory, with the same name. Open clean_data.ipynb and run all cells. This checks and cleans the data, writing out the cleaner version as 2018-08-wm-ss-cleaned.csv . Open analyze_data.ipynb and run all cells. This writes out the figures figure1.png and figure2.png that you see in our report. Open simulate_data.ipynb and run all cells. This writes out tables 1 and 2 that you see in our report.

The README file can also be your report. In that case, your README instructions would be “Run this notebook to generate our report”.

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Find science resources | tpt, importance of learning science.

Learning science is particularly important for students as it equips them with the essential knowledge and skills to make sense of the world around them. Science education is not just about memorizing facts. It fosters critical thinking, inquiry, and problem-solving abilities. These skills are not only useful in school but also in everyday life beyond the classroom.

Benefits of learning science

Learning science offers many benefits to students both in school and beyond. In fact, it helps students:

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With a solid foundation in science, teachers can help empower students to think critically, solve problems, make informed decisions, and engage with the world around them in meaningful ways.

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One of the best parts about science class is all of the possibilities for hands-on, collaborative learning! Think: labs, experiments, inquiry-based activities, and design challenges. These activities encourage students to explore scientific concepts by observing, asking questions, and conducting investigations. Additionally, with small group centers, students can engage in group experiments, discussions, and projects that require them to collaborate, share ideas, and solve problems together.

Discover printable and digital science resources

If you’re a teacher or parent looking for printable or digital science resources, TPT has an extensive array of instructional materials for every learning need, topic, or grade level. Whether you're learning about plant parts or butterfly life cycles, or exploring advanced topics like the anatomy of a cell or Newton’s laws of motion, we've got you covered.

On TPT, science resources come in various forms: from labs and worksheets to craftivities and doodle notes. They can be used to enhance learning, assess a student’s mastery of science concepts, or to reteach a tricky topic. With plenty of TPT resources at your fingertips, teaching and learning science will be so much easier. Plus, you can expand students’ knowledge even further by exploring TPT math resources, which are frequently paired with science lessons.

Frequently asked questions about teaching science

What types of science lessons are available on tpt.

There are many different types of science resources sold by Sellers on TPT. Some popular science lessons include biology, earth sciences, chemistry, environment, engineering, and anatomy.

How do I find science lessons on TPT?

Educators can save time preparing science lessons with resources created by experienced teachers. Simply start a search for science resources on the TPT marketplace, and filter by grade level, price, and/or resource type to find materials that've been proven to work in classrooms like yours. No matter what you’re teaching, there are plenty of science lessons and activities sold by Sellers on TPT that are tailored to meet your students' skill levels.

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Students learn best when they're engaged! Sprinkle a little fun into your science lessons and make them feel like real scientists by investigating everyday objects, exploring the world outside the classroom, and doing hands-on and collaborative experiments and design challenges.

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iRubric: Science Investigatory Project rubric

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