rubric for business plan assignment

Creating a Comprehensive Business Plan Rubric

A well-structured business plan is a foundational document for any entrepreneurial venture, serving as a roadmap to guide your business to success. It provides clarity on your business goals, strategies, and financial projections, making it an essential tool for attracting investors and stakeholders. However, evaluating the quality and completeness of a business plan can be challenging, especially when dealing with multiple plans. This is where a business plan rubric comes into play. It’s a systematic and objective way to assess business plans consistently.

How to Create a Comprehensive Business Plan Rubric

1. define your objectives.

Start by identifying the objectives of your business plan rubric. What do you want to assess and measure in the business plans? Your objectives may include evaluating market research, financial projections, marketing strategies, or overall clarity and coherence. Make sure your objectives align with the key components of a well-rounded business plan.

2. Establish Criteria

For each objective, establish specific criteria or factors that you will evaluate. For instance, if you’re assessing market research, your criteria might include the depth of market analysis, competitor research, and target audience insights. Clearly define the criteria for each objective.

3. Assign Weightings

Not all criteria are equally important. Assign weightings to each criterion based on its significance. Weightings reflect the relative importance of different elements in the business plan. For example, financial projections may carry more weight than a company’s historical background.

4. Develop a Scoring System

Create a scoring system for each criterion. You can use a numerical scale (e.g., 1-5, 1-10) or a descriptive scale (e.g., poor, fair, good, excellent). This system allows you to provide a quantitative assessment for each criterion.

5. Provide Clear Descriptions

For each criterion and level on the scoring system, provide clear descriptions of what each level represents. This ensures consistent and objective evaluation. Avoid vague descriptions to prevent subjectivity.

6. Consider the Overall Structure

Include an assessment of the business plan’s overall structure and presentation. Elements to consider might include readability, use of headings, and formatting. A well-organized and visually appealing plan often indicates a more professional and thoughtful approach.

7. Test Your Rubric

Before applying your rubric to assess real business plans, test it with a few sample plans to ensure that it’s clear, fair, and effective. Make any necessary adjustments based on your testing.

8. Evaluate Business Plans

Once your rubric is ready, you can begin evaluating business plans. Review each plan against the criteria, assign scores, and calculate the final scores based on the weightings.

9. Provide Feedback

After assessing the plans, offer constructive feedback to the entrepreneurs or teams behind them. Highlight strengths and weaknesses, and offer recommendations for improvement. This feedback can be invaluable for the plan’s creators.

10. Maintain Consistency

Consistency is key in using a business plan rubric. Ensure that different assessors apply the rubric consistently, and if possible, discuss and calibrate your rubric assessments with other evaluators to maintain fairness and objectivity.

11. Use the Results

The results from your business plan rubric can help you make informed decisions about which plans align best with your investment or support criteria. Plans with higher scores are likely more well-prepared and have thoroughly considered various aspects of their business.

Business Rubric Example

Here are a few examples of criteria that could be included in a business plan rubric along with a corresponding scoring system:

• Identification of target market (5 points)
• Thoroughness of competitor analysis (5 points)
• Assessment of market trends and growth potential (5 points)
• Realistic revenue forecasts (5 points)
• Comprehensive cost analysis (5 points)
• Clear understanding of profit margins (5 points)
• Coherent and effective marketing plan (5 points)
• Utilization of digital marketing tools (5 points)
• Identification of key marketing channels (5 points)
• Description of unique value proposition (5 points)
• Clarity in product development roadmap (5 points)
• Assessment of potential market demand (5 points)
• Demonstrated expertise and experience (5 points)
• Coherence and complementary skills of the team (5 points)
• Clarity in roles and responsibilities (5 points)
• Identification of potential risks (5 points)
• Comprehensive risk mitigation strategies (5 points)
• Contingency plans for identified risks (5 points)
• Clarity and coherence of the business plan structure (5 points)
• Use of appropriate visuals and graphics (5 points)
• Professionalism and readability of the document (5 points)

For each of the criteria listed above, a scoring system can be implemented using a scale such as:

• 1-5 scale (1 being Poor, 5 being Excellent)
• 1-10 scale (1 being Low, 10 being High)
• Descriptive scale (Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent)

In summary, a well-structured business plan rubric is a valuable tool for evaluating and comparing multiple business plans. It provides objectivity, consistency, and fairness in assessing the quality and completeness of these plans, helping you make informed decisions when considering investments or partnerships. This business plan rubric can help assessors evaluate various business plans consistently and objectively, providing a comprehensive overview of the strengths and weaknesses of each plan and aiding in making informed decisions regarding potential investments or collaborations.

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.

• Workshop Recording (Fall 2022)
• Workshop Registration

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.

Center for Teaching Innovation

Resource library.

• AACU VALUE Rubrics

Using rubrics

A rubric is a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment. Rubrics can be used for a variety of assignments: research papers, group projects, portfolios, and presentations.  

Why use rubrics? 

Rubrics help instructors: 

• Assess assignments consistently from student-to-student. 
• Save time in grading, both short-term and long-term. 
• Give timely, effective feedback and promote student learning in a sustainable way. 
• Clarify expectations and components of an assignment for both students and course teaching assistants (TAs). 
• Refine teaching methods by evaluating rubric results. 

Rubrics help students: 

• Understand expectations and components of an assignment. 
• Become more aware of their learning process and progress. 
• Improve work through timely and detailed feedback. 

Considerations for using rubrics 

When developing rubrics consider the following:

• Although it takes time to build a rubric, time will be saved in the long run as grading and providing feedback on student work will become more streamlined.  
• A rubric can be a fillable pdf that can easily be emailed to students. 
• They can be used for oral presentations. 
• They are a great tool to evaluate teamwork and individual contribution to group tasks. 
• Rubrics facilitate peer-review by setting evaluation standards. Have students use the rubric to provide peer assessment on various drafts. 
• Students can use them for self-assessment to improve personal performance and learning. Encourage students to use the rubrics to assess their own work. 
• Motivate students to improve their work by using rubric feedback to resubmit their work incorporating the feedback. 

Getting Started with Rubrics 

• Start small by creating one rubric for one assignment in a semester.  
• Ask colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments or adapt rubrics that are available online. For example, the  AACU has rubrics  for topics such as written and oral communication, critical thinking, and creative thinking. RubiStar helps you to develop your rubric based on templates.  
• Examine an assignment for your course. Outline the elements or critical attributes to be evaluated (these attributes must be objectively measurable). 
• Create an evaluative range for performance quality under each element; for instance, “excellent,” “good,” “unsatisfactory.” 
• Avoid using subjective or vague criteria such as “interesting” or “creative.” Instead, outline objective indicators that would fall under these categories. 
• The criteria must clearly differentiate one performance level from another. 
• Assign a numerical scale to each level. 
• Give a draft of the rubric to your colleagues and/or TAs for feedback. 
• Train students to use your rubric and solicit feedback. This will help you judge whether the rubric is clear to them and will identify any weaknesses. 
• Rework the rubric based on the feedback. 

• help_outline help

iRubric: Business Plan Grading Rubric (Written)

• Business Plan

Assessment Rubrics

A rubric is commonly defined as a tool that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing criteria, and for each criteria, describing levels of quality (Andrade, 2000; Arter & Chappuis, 2007; Stiggins, 2001). Criteria are used in determining the level at which student work meets expectations. Markers of quality give students a clear idea about what must be done to demonstrate a certain level of mastery, understanding, or proficiency (i.e., "Exceeds Expectations" does xyz, "Meets Expectations" does only xy or yz, "Developing" does only x or y or z). Rubrics can be used for any assignment in a course, or for any way in which students are asked to demonstrate what they've learned. They can also be used to facilitate self and peer-reviews of student work.

Rubrics aren't just for summative evaluation. They can be used as a teaching tool as well. When used as part of a formative assessment, they can help students understand both the holistic nature and/or specific analytics of learning expected, the level of learning expected, and then make decisions about their current level of learning to inform revision and improvement (Reddy & Andrade, 2010). 

Why use rubrics?

Rubrics help instructors:

Provide students with feedback that is clear, directed and focused on ways to improve learning.

Demystify assignment expectations so students can focus on the work instead of guessing "what the instructor wants."

Reduce time spent on grading and develop consistency in how you evaluate student learning across students and throughout a class.

Rubrics help students:

Focus their efforts on completing assignments in line with clearly set expectations.

Self and Peer-reflect on their learning, making informed changes to achieve the desired learning level.

Developing a Rubric

During the process of developing a rubric, instructors might:

Select an assignment for your course - ideally one you identify as time intensive to grade, or students report as having unclear expectations.

Decide what you want students to demonstrate about their learning through that assignment. These are your criteria.

Identify the markers of quality on which you feel comfortable evaluating students’ level of learning - often along with a numerical scale (i.e., "Accomplished," "Emerging," "Beginning" for a developmental approach).

Give students the rubric ahead of time. Advise them to use it in guiding their completion of the assignment.

It can be overwhelming to create a rubric for every assignment in a class at once, so start by creating one rubric for one assignment. See how it goes and develop more from there! Also, do not reinvent the wheel. Rubric templates and examples exist all over the Internet, or consider asking colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments. 

Sample Rubrics

Examples of holistic and analytic rubrics : see Tables 2 & 3 in “Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners” (Allen & Tanner, 2006)

Examples across assessment types : see “Creating and Using Rubrics,” Carnegie Mellon Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and & Educational Innovation

“VALUE Rubrics” : see the Association of American Colleges and Universities set of free, downloadable rubrics, with foci including creative thinking, problem solving, and information literacy. 

Andrade, H. 2000. Using rubrics to promote thinking and learning. Educational Leadership 57, no. 5: 13–18. Arter, J., and J. Chappuis. 2007. Creating and recognizing quality rubrics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall. Stiggins, R.J. 2001. Student-involved classroom assessment. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Reddy, Y., & Andrade, H. (2010). A review of rubric use in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation In Higher Education, 35(4), 435-448.

How to Use Rubrics

A rubric is a document that describes the criteria by which students’ assignments are graded. Rubrics can be helpful for:

• Making grading faster and more consistent (reducing potential bias). 
• Communicating your expectations for an assignment to students before they begin. 

Moreover, for assignments whose criteria are more subjective, the process of creating a rubric and articulating what it looks like to succeed at an assignment provides an opportunity to check for alignment with the intended learning outcomes and modify the assignment prompt, as needed.

Why rubrics?

Rubrics are best for assignments or projects that require evaluation on multiple dimensions. Creating a rubric makes the instructor’s standards explicit to both students and other teaching staff for the class, showing students how to meet expectations.

Additionally, the more comprehensive a rubric is, the more it allows for grading to be streamlined—students will get informative feedback about their performance from the rubric, even if they don’t have as many individualized comments. Grading can be more standardized and efficient across graders.

Finally, rubrics allow for reflection, as the instructor has to think about their standards and outcomes for the students. Using rubrics can help with self-directed learning in students as well, especially if rubrics are used to review students’ own work or their peers’, or if students are involved in creating the rubric.

How to design a rubric

1. consider the desired learning outcomes.

What learning outcomes is this assignment reinforcing and assessing? If the learning outcome seems “fuzzy,” iterate on the outcome by thinking about the expected student work product. This may help you more clearly articulate the learning outcome in a way that is measurable.  

2. Define criteria

What does a successful assignment submission look like? As described by Allen and Tanner (2006), it can help develop an initial list of categories that the student should demonstrate proficiency in by completing the assignment. These categories should correlate with the intended learning outcomes you identified in Step 1, although they may be more granular in some cases. For example, if the task assesses students’ ability to formulate an effective communication strategy, what components of their communication strategy will you be looking for? Talking with colleagues or looking at existing rubrics for similar tasks may give you ideas for categories to consider for evaluation.

If you have assigned this task to students before and have samples of student work, it can help create a qualitative observation guide. This is described in Linda Suskie’s book Assessing Student Learning , where she suggests thinking about what made you decide to give one assignment an A and another a C, as well as taking notes when grading assignments and looking for common patterns. The often repeated themes that you comment on may show what your goals and expectations for students are. An example of an observation guide used to take notes on predetermined areas of an assignment is shown here .

In summary, consider the following list of questions when defining criteria for a rubric (O’Reilly and Cyr, 2006):

• What do you want students to learn from the task?
• How will students demonstrate that they have learned?
• What knowledge, skills, and behaviors are required for the task?
• What steps are required for the task?
• What are the characteristics of the final product?

After developing an initial list of criteria, prioritize the most important skills you want to target and eliminate unessential criteria or combine similar skills into one group. Most rubrics have between 3 and 8 criteria. Rubrics that are too lengthy make it difficult to grade and challenging for students to understand the key skills they need to achieve for the given assignment. 

3. Create the rating scale

According to Suskie, you will want at least 3 performance levels: for adequate and inadequate performance, at the minimum, and an exemplary level to motivate students to strive for even better work. Rubrics often contain 5 levels, with an additional level between adequate and exemplary and a level between adequate and inadequate. Usually, no more than 5 levels are needed, as having too many rating levels can make it hard to consistently distinguish which rating to give an assignment (such as between a 6 or 7 out of 10). Suskie also suggests labeling each level with names to clarify which level represents the minimum acceptable performance. Labels will vary by assignment and subject, but some examples are: 

• Exceeds standard, meets standard, approaching standard, below standard
• Complete evidence, partial evidence, minimal evidence, no evidence

4. Fill in descriptors

Fill in descriptors for each criterion at each performance level. Expand on the list of criteria you developed in Step 2. Begin to write full descriptions, thinking about what an exemplary example would look like for students to strive towards. Avoid vague terms like “good” and make sure to use explicit, concrete terms to describe what would make a criterion good. For instance, a criterion called “organization and structure” would be more descriptive than “writing quality.” Describe measurable behavior and use parallel language for clarity; the wording for each criterion should be very similar, except for the degree to which standards are met. For example, in a sample rubric from Chapter 9 of Suskie’s book, the criterion of “persuasiveness” has the following descriptors:

• Well Done (5): Motivating questions and advance organizers convey the main idea. Information is accurate.
• Satisfactory (3-4): Includes persuasive information.
• Needs Improvement (1-2): Include persuasive information with few facts.
• Incomplete (0): Information is incomplete, out of date, or incorrect.

These sample descriptors generally have the same sentence structure that provides consistent language across performance levels and shows the degree to which each standard is met.

5. Test your rubric

Test your rubric using a range of student work to see if the rubric is realistic. You may also consider leaving room for aspects of the assignment, such as effort, originality, and creativity, to encourage students to go beyond the rubric. If there will be multiple instructors grading, it is important to calibrate the scoring by having all graders use the rubric to grade a selected set of student work and then discuss any differences in the scores. This process helps develop consistency in grading and making the grading more valid and reliable.

Types of Rubrics

If you would like to dive deeper into rubric terminology, this section is dedicated to discussing some of the different types of rubrics. However, regardless of the type of rubric you use, it’s still most important to focus first on your learning goals and think about how the rubric will help clarify students’ expectations and measure student progress towards those learning goals.

Depending on the nature of the assignment, rubrics can come in several varieties (Suskie, 2009):

Checklist Rubric

This is the simplest kind of rubric, which lists specific features or aspects of the assignment which may be present or absent. A checklist rubric does not involve the creation of a rating scale with descriptors. See example from 18.821 project-based math class .

Rating Scale Rubric

This is like a checklist rubric, but instead of merely noting the presence or absence of a feature or aspect of the assignment, the grader also rates quality (often on a graded or Likert-style scale). See example from 6.811 assistive technology class .

Descriptive Rubric

A descriptive rubric is like a rating scale, but including descriptions of what performing to a certain level on each scale looks like. Descriptive rubrics are particularly useful in communicating instructors’ expectations of performance to students and in creating consistency with multiple graders on an assignment. This kind of rubric is probably what most people think of when they imagine a rubric. See example from 15.279 communications class .

Holistic Scoring Guide

Unlike the first 3 types of rubrics, a holistic scoring guide describes performance at different levels (e.g., A-level performance, B-level performance) holistically without analyzing the assignment into several different scales. This kind of rubric is particularly useful when there are many assignments to grade and a moderate to a high degree of subjectivity in the assessment of quality. It can be difficult to have consistency across scores, and holistic scoring guides are most helpful when making decisions quickly rather than providing detailed feedback to students. See example from 11.229 advanced writing seminar .

The kind of rubric that is most appropriate will depend on the assignment in question.

Implementation tips

Rubrics are also available to use for Canvas assignments. See this resource from Boston College for more details and guides from Canvas Instructure.

Allen, D., & Tanner, K. (2006). Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 5 (3), 197-203. doi:10.1187/cbe.06-06-0168

Cherie Miot Abbanat. 11.229 Advanced Writing Seminar. Spring 2004. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Haynes Miller, Nat Stapleton, Saul Glasman, and Susan Ruff. 18.821 Project Laboratory in Mathematics. Spring 2013. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Lori Breslow, and Terence Heagney. 15.279 Management Communication for Undergraduates. Fall 2012. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

O’Reilly, L., & Cyr, T. (2006). Creating a Rubric: An Online Tutorial for Faculty. Retrieved from https://www.ucdenver.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/center-for-faculty-development/Documents/Tutorials/Rubrics/index.htm

Suskie, L. (2009). Using a scoring guide or rubric to plan and evaluate an assessment. In Assessing student learning: A common sense guide (2nd edition, pp. 137-154 ) . Jossey-Bass.

William Li, Grace Teo, and Robert Miller. 6.811 Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology. Fall 2014. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

BU113: Critical Thinking and Communication in Business Saint Michael's College

Preparing the Business Plan--report and presentation ( due 3/5 )

• Include a cover page with the name of the group/company, the names and positions of the members/managers, the class, date.  Please state on the cover page that “ This information is confidential .” The next page should be a Table of Contents. 
• The body of the Business Plan should be divided into sections with headings (see sections 1. - 4. below) and written in paragraph form , single-spaced, with no indentations .  Paragraphs (with topic sentences) should introduce each section.
• Charts (graphs, tables) included in the report must also be discussed in text form.
• There is no length limitation for this assignment.
• See the slide show on the Financial Plan  (part of the Business Plan slide show) to do the financial calculations for your report and to see what your Projected Income Statement should look like.
• Use the  Capital-Inventory-Sales-Expenses  spreadsheet set up for your group to calculate your capital and inventory and to keep a weekly record of all sales and expenses (see email).
• See the  Business Report Scoring Rubric , which will be used to evaluate your Business Plan--a report.
• Review the samples available in DocSharing--Samples of Class Assignments .  Click the drop-down arrow next to "Select View".  See also the real-world sample with great graphs and charts for the Bakery Business Plan .
• Attach the completed and signed Group Contribution Form to the paper (also found in DocSharing > Forms).
• In class, submit the written Business Plan with supporting PowerPoint slides (in handout form, 6 slides per page).
• Present your Business Plan to the class in a PowerPoint presentation of approximately 7-9 minutes.
• Upload your PowerPoint presentation to eCollege DocSharing > Business Plan & Presentation  BEFORE class.
• Review the evaluation criteria in the Team Presentation Rubric .

Use the following outline as a guide as you prepare your Business Plan for your company in BU113.  For Writing and Presentation instructions, see the guidelines above.

• Name of the company, names of the management team, headquarters/office, phone number; include "Confidential" on the cover page.
• List sections and page references.
• Purpose of the business
• How your company will impact or meet the needs of the various stakeholder groups: customers, investors, the company, and society
• Organization Chart
• Key skills and abilities
• Role in this business and why this person is suited for this role
• Supplier of the product (if applicable)
• Description of product and key characteristics
• What makes it unique/competitive
• Who will use this product/why
• Specific demographics of target market
• Economic characteristics
• Who are your competitors
• Strengths and weaknesses of competition
• Pricing strategy
• Pricing strategy vs. competition
• How will you develop demand for your product?
• Where will you produce your product and how will you get it to the market?
• Example: 10 roses per week  X  $2 per rose = $20 estimated sales per week
• Example: 10 roses per week  X  $.25 cost to the company per rose = $2.50 total COGS
• Other expenses per week (e.g. advertising, taxes)
• Net income per week : Total Sales – Total Expenses per week
• Aggregate Sales – Aggregate Expenses during the 6 weeks of running your business
• Equipment list (if applicable)
• Schedule (table) of how much capital is needed and for what
• Teams must decide on the total number of shares to be offered to outside and management investors combined.
• All teams must offer at least 20 shares to outside investors.
• Teams must indicate in writing in the Business Plan and at the Marketplace what percentage (%) of the company one share represents (e.g. If a team has a total of 100 shares to be offered to outsiders and management, each share = 1% ownership.)
• Management must actually spend the money to purchase all shares that they buy.
• List of shareholders: Name of each shareholder, contact information, and number of shares bought (including management shareholders)
• Summary of the number of shares issued to management and the number of shares issues to outside shareholders
• The total amount of equity capital that the sale of stock to management and outsiders raised. 
• If you expect to raise additional capital during the course of running your business, estimate how much and indicate what sources of capital you will use. (e.g. loans, stock)
• Formula to be used: Estimated aggregate net income after taxes divided by $ raised from stock issued to management and outside shareholders  
• Completed up-to-date CAPITAL-INVENTORY-SALES-EXPENSES spreadsheet (capital, inventory, and loans/money borrowed areas filled in)
• Revised resumes of each of the management team members
• logo (and documentation of permission from SMC if using SMC official logo)
• PowerPoint slides in handout form (6 slides per page)

This page was last updated: March 5, 2012

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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Whenever we give feedback, it inevitably reflects our priorities and expectations about the assignment. In other words, we're using a rubric to choose which elements (e.g., right/wrong answer, work shown, thesis analysis, style, etc.) receive more or less feedback and what counts as a "good thesis" or a "less good thesis." When we evaluate student work, that is, we always have a rubric. The question is how consciously we’re applying it, whether we’re transparent with students about what it is, whether it’s aligned with what students are learning in our course, and whether we’re applying it consistently. The more we’re doing all of the following, the more consistent and equitable our feedback and grading will be:

Being conscious of your rubric ideally means having one written out, with explicit criteria and concrete features that describe more/less successful versions of each criterion. If you don't have a rubric written out, you can use this assignment prompt decoder for TFs & TAs to determine which elements and criteria should be the focus of your rubric.

Being transparent with students about your rubric means sharing it with them ahead of time and making sure they understand it. This assignment prompt decoder for students is designed to facilitate this discussion between students and instructors.

Aligning your rubric with your course means articulating the relationship between “this” assignment and the ones that scaffold up and build from it, which ideally involves giving students the chance to practice different elements of the assignment and get formative feedback before they’re asked to submit material that will be graded. For more ideas and advice on how this looks, see the " Formative Assignments " page at Gen Ed Writes.

Applying your rubric consistently means using a stable vocabulary when making your comments and keeping your feedback focused on the criteria in your rubric.

How to Build a Rubric

Rubrics and assignment prompts are two sides of a coin. If you’ve already created a prompt, you should have all of the information you need to make a rubric. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way, and that itself turns out to be an advantage of making rubrics: it’s a great way to test whether your prompt is in fact communicating to students everything they need to know about the assignment they’ll be doing.

So what do students need to know? In general, assignment prompts boil down to a small number of common elements :

• Evidence and Analysis
• Style and Conventions
• Specific Guidelines
• Advice on Process

If an assignment prompt is clearly addressing each of these elements, then students know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and when/how/for whom they’re doing it. From the standpoint of a rubric, we can see how these elements correspond to the criteria for feedback:

All of these criteria can be weighed and given feedback, and they’re all things that students can be taught and given opportunities to practice. That makes them good criteria for a rubric, and that in turn is why they belong in every assignment prompt.

Which leaves “purpose” and “advice on process.” These elements are, in a sense, the heart and engine of any assignment, but their role in a rubric will differ from assignment to assignment. Here are a couple of ways to think about each.

On the one hand, “purpose” is the rationale for how the other elements are working in an assignment, and so feedback on them adds up to feedback on the skills students are learning vis-a-vis the overall purpose. In that sense, separately grading whether students have achieved an assignment’s “purpose” can be tricky.

On the other hand, metacognitive components such as journals or cover letters or artist statements are a great way for students to tie work on their assignment to the broader (often future-oriented) reasons why they’ve been doing the assignment. Making this kind of component a small part of the overall grade, e.g., 5% and/or part of “specific guidelines,” can allow it to be a nudge toward a meaningful self-reflection for students on what they’ve been learning and how it might build toward other assignments or experiences.

Advice on process

As with “purpose,” “advice on process” often amounts to helping students break down an assignment into the elements they’ll get feedback on. In that sense, feedback on those steps is often more informal or aimed at giving students practice with skills or components that will be parts of the bigger assignment.

For those reasons, though, the kind of feedback we give students on smaller steps has its own (even if ungraded) rubric. For example, if a prompt asks students to  propose a research question as part of the bigger project, they might get feedback on whether it can be answered by evidence, or whether it has a feasible scope, or who the audience for its findings might be. All of those criteria, in turn, could—and ideally would—later be part of the rubric for the graded project itself. Or perhaps students are submitting earlier, smaller components of an assignment for separate grades; or are expected to submit separate components all together at the end as a portfolio, perhaps together with a cover letter or artist statement .

Using Rubrics Effectively

In the same way that rubrics can facilitate the design phase of assignment, they can also facilitate the teaching and feedback phases, including of course grading. Here are a few ways this can work in a course:

Discuss the rubric ahead of time with your teaching team. Getting on the same page about what students will be doing and how different parts of the assignment fit together is, in effect, laying out what needs to happen in class and in section, both in terms of what students need to learn and practice, and how the coming days or weeks should be sequenced.

Share the rubric with your students ahead of time. For the same reason it's ideal for course heads to discuss rubrics with their teaching team, it’s ideal for the teaching team to discuss the rubric with students. Not only does the rubric lay out the different skills students will learn during an assignment and which skills are more or less important for that assignment,  it means that the formative feedback they get along the way is more legible as getting practice on elements of the “bigger assignment.” To be sure, this can’t always happen. Rubrics aren’t always up and running at the beginning of an assignment, and sometimes they emerge more inductively during the feedback and grading process, as instructors take stock of what students have actually submitted. In both cases, later is better than never—there’s no need to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Circulating a rubric at the time you return student work can still be a valuable tool to help students see the relationship between the learning objectives and goals of the assignment and the feedback and grade they’ve received.

Discuss the rubric with your teaching team during the grading process. If your assignment has a rubric, it’s important to make sure that everyone who will be grading is able to use the rubric consistently. Most rubrics aren’t exhaustive—see the note above on rubrics that are “too specific”—and a great way to see how different graders are handling “real-life” scenarios for an assignment is to have the entire team grade a few samples (including examples that seem more representative of an “A” or a “B”) and compare everyone’s approaches. We suggest scheduling a grade-norming session for your teaching staff.

• Designing Your Course
• In the Classroom
• When/Why/How: Some General Principles of Responding to Student Work
• Consistency and Equity in Grading
• Assessing Class Participation
• Assessing Non-Traditional Assignments
• Beyond “the Grade”: Alternative Approaches to Assessment
• Getting Feedback
• Equitable & Inclusive Teaching
• Advising and Mentoring
• Teaching and Your Career
• Teaching Remotely
• Tools and Platforms
• The Science of Learning
• Bok Publications
• Other Resources Around Campus

College of Business and Management Rubric Examples

• Using Scoring Rubrics – CSUFresno  (PDF)
• Accounting Rubric – LATech  (PDF)
• College of Business Rubrics and Outcomes – Grand Valley State University  (PDF)
• Computer Programming Grading Rubric – California State University Long Beach  (PDF)
• Economics MA Written Rubric – CSUEB  (PDF)
• Economics MA Research Rubric – CSUEB  (PDF)
• Micro-economics Rubric – CSULB  (PDF)
• Finance Rubric – RCampus  (PDF)
• Management Information Systems Rubric – Memorial University  (PDF)
• Marketing Rubric – Illinois State  (PDF)
• MBA Leadership Rubric – CSU Eastbay  (PDF)
• Back to Main Rubrics Example Page

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14.9: Assignment- Marketing Plan Peer Review

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• Lumen Learning

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For this assignment, students use the same rubric as the instructor (see instructions below) and grade their peers’ work. The peer review grade counts for 25% of a student’s total grade for the Marketing Plan. Each student also receives points for completing the peer review, equivalent to 10% of the total class grade.

Student Instructions: Review a marketing plan prepared by one of your classmates for this course, as assigned by your instructor. Use the rubric’s in your original marketing assignments to evaluate your classmate’s work.

Provide summary comments about each section of the plan, as well as suggestions for improvement in any areas that warrant further attention and work. You should comment on what your peer has done well, along with things to improve.

Remember, as a reviewer your job isn’t just to find nice things to say. Your job is to evaluate the overall quality of the work and identify problems that need to be corrected, so that your peer can improve his or her work and receive full credit for the marketing plan assignment. You will receive credit for the peer review based on the professionalism, thoroughness and accuracy of how you evaluate and provide feedback on your peer’s marketing plan.

Instructor’s Sample Grading Rubric for Peer Review Assignment

Total points possible for Peer Review Assignment: 50 pts.

Contributors and Attributions

• Optional Assignment: Marketing Plan Peer Review. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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May 6, 2024 Accountancy Alumni Business Administration Faculty Finance Student

Implementing AI technology in business education

By embracing a spirit of experimentation, we can view the changes that lie ahead for our industry with optimism instead of trepidation.

By Robert Brunner

• Artificial intelligence platforms might not yet produce responses that we would mistake as human-generated, but they are   learning and growing more sophisticated by the day.  
• To prepare students for the future of AI, faculty at Gies College of Business ask students to use AI platforms for certain assignments and then discuss what prompts their peers used to receive their results. 
• Faculty also are experimenting with the technology themselves on tasks such as grading and writing quizzes, so that they are prepared to integrate AI into their teaching.

The climate of higher education has been undergoing great upheaval over not just the past few years, but the past few months . In particular, we have seen the quick adoption of ChatGPT and the vast changes this technology has inspired in our courses.

As with many past disruptive technologies, ChatGPT has inspired great uncertainty, even fear and trepidation, among faculty. But I don’t think these are appropriate responses. On the contrary, I look upon these changes with a sense of optimism. And excitement. I believe that, as academics, we must take to heart the quote often ascribed to management guru Peter Drucker: “Innovate or die.”

With that idea in mind, I want to share my experiences and those of my colleagues here at Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Our approach to adopting artificial intelligence (AI) illustrates how we can embrace new technologies and prepare students for what they will encounter in their future careers.

A Career Foc used on ‘What’s Next’

My background is perhaps quite different from many people who teach business courses. It has been one of using technology, embracing innovation, and celebrating curiosity.

I am currently the associate dean for innovation, chief disruption officer, and professor of accountancy at Gies Business. But my academic training was not in business; it was in astronomy. I started my career by working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey , a long-term project that mapped a large fraction of the night sky. During this experience, I worked primarily with big data and machine learning. Later, I accepted a position as a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois, where I also worked with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications .  

In 2017, I moved to Gies College of Business because I thought its programs provided a unique opportunity. Business school administrators and educators could use the university’s strengths in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as opportunities to really think about what is over the next hill. We could explore important questions, such as what major impacts forthcoming innovations will have on business and society. As director of the University of Illinois–Deloitte Foundation Center for Business Analytics at that time, I could contribute to how our college was educating its students and preparing its stakeholders for the future.

Originally, my role centered primarily around data analytics. But even then, administrators at Gies were thinking about bigger opportunities that were starting to take shape.

What Do We Mean by Artificial Intelligence?

Now, as the college’s chief disruption officer, I’m helping faculty make sense of the impact that other disruptive technologies, such as AI, are having on business. As we discuss the implications and capabilities of AI, it’s natural that we evaluate it through the lens of human intelligence. Consider the people we know or meet during the day. Through our interactions with them, can we gauge their levels of intelligence? Can we know, based on our perceptions of their intelligence, what it means for them to be human?

For this, people most often look to the Turing Test, which was actually called the imitation game by creator Alan Turing. Simply stated, the test asks a human being to converse with both an artificial entity such as a computer and another human, separated from each by a wall. If the human test subject cannot differentiate the responses of the AI from those of the human, we would consider that AI to be intelligent.

We are now in our own 21st-century version of the Turing Test as we interact with ChatGPT. Such platforms promise to be the most impactful technologies we have seen in recent times.

The Usefulness of ChatGPT

We can consider AI technology from two different perspectives. First, we can view its interactive interface as an amazing way to converse with some sort of artificial intelligence. In this respect,   it does seem to be approaching the point of “winning” Turing’s imitation game.

Second, we can recognize that ChatGPT is a generative tool based on a large language model (LLM) that has been “trained” by scraping a huge amount of data from the internet. When we type prompts into interfaces such as ChatGPT, the AI then uses that text to start inferring its answer. When we see the answer, we can give it a thumbs up or thumbs down on how well it answered our prompt. The system will use this feedback to continue to improve the LLM over time, not just for each individual user but for the entire population of people using the same model.

In other words, ChatGPT is basically a propagating, self-training imitation game that’s just going to keep getting better at answering questions more quickly, in ways that make users happy. And this is just the beginning. We are already seeing new ways to interact with LLMs via audio and video in multimodal interactions that closely imitate how humans interact with each other.

Eventually, I believe these types of technologies will blend into the background as they become ingrained into our everyday life, in much the same way as email, text messages, web search, or social media are now no longer considered magical . The next step in the technology’s evolution could involve wearable devices that record our lives to allow an AI to help us deal with information in new and more powerful ways.

Teaching With AI

At Gies, I created an emerging technology course that I now have taught for the last four years. I tell each cohort of students that we are not teaching them to predict the future—that’s a fool’s errand. Instead, we are trying to teach them how to predict possible scenarios. If they know what the possible scenarios are, they can better prepare themselves—and their companies—for those outcomes.

The course is built so that the students don’t just learn about these emerging technologies; they actually must use them as part of their assessments. Thus, we teach the students what AI can and can’t do. We ask students to use AI such as ChatGPT to develop answers for some assignments, as part of the assignment rubric.

However, we don’t want them to just use an AI platform once and say, “Here’s my essay.” Instead, we require them to examine the process of using the technology. What prompts did they use? How did changing the prompts change the responses they received? How much do they trust those responses?

To help them answer these questions, we include peer grading in these assignments. In this case, it’s not about grading someone else’s work as much as it’s about seeing how different students approached the problem at hand. It can be extremely useful for students to know what prompts their peers used to receive their results.

Other faculty at Gies College are also bringing AI into their courses. For example, in IT for Networked Organizations, my colleague Vishal Sachdev developed a bot to serve as a support to students. It is intended to act like a member of the classroom, but with better memory. Based on the course syllabus, this bot helps students become familiar with the basic outline of the course.

Next, Sachdev developed a new bot with the same back-end infrastructure as the first. He trained this one with assignment instructions, a model submission, a rubric, and guidelines on how to respond to students. This bot can provide critiques to student submissions, feedback on possible missing elements in assignments and problems with word length, and guidance on whether students have sufficiently answered the assignment’s question.

We also have a Teaching and Learning team that supports both our in-person and online programs, examines available educational technologies, and provides faculty with guidance and leadership on how the newest edtech can be brought into the classroom. For the past couple of years, in conjunction with our Disruption Lab, our Teaching and Learning team has hosted monthly Zoom coffee hour meetings called Teaching with Innovative Technologies.  During these meetings, Gies faculty share their experiences implementing specific technologies, including AI, in their courses—whether they’ve streamlined their grading with AI or have used chatbots to engage their students. These conversations are opportunities for our faculty to discuss the benefits AI tools can bring to the classroom.

Tips and Techniques

There are a few things I would suggest to others who are interested in bringing AI into their classrooms:

Know that there is a learning curve. Using an AI interface is not as simple as typing text into a Word file. At least not yet. You’ve probably heard about prompt engineering, which is crafting the best prompt to get ChatGPT to write something that is as close as possible to what you want. Many people are out there offering to teach people how to get better at this, but we have to be careful—not all of this training is relevant to higher education, or even useful.

Be willing to experiment. You likely will fail at the start, but don’t stop testing the boundaries of the technology. The beauty of using these tools is that they don’t complain if you ask them to do the same thing over and over. To get good at using AI platforms, you’re going to have to spend time with them to understand how they work and learn how to use them in your courses.

Don’t be afraid to try it in unexpected contexts. AI might be of value in areas where you thought it wouldn’t be helpful! One thing that most surprised me was how well—and how amazingly quickly—these tools could generate quiz questions based on content that I wrote for the course. This addresses one of the tasks I find to be the biggest drudgery of teaching: creating quizzes. Now, I can use ChatGPT (or another AI tool) to create 25 questions, and then I can pick the best 10 questions and edit them as needed.

With a little prompt engineering, you can customize the results. You can tell ChatGPT that you want two answers that are right, or you can ask it to generate one right answer along with an explanation tailored to the level of your students. It also will generate different answers with potential rubrics and explanations for why each answer is correct. Used this way, the tool provides a huge time savings.

Be open to new possibilities. If you think about it, it’s really amazing what generative AI platforms can do. But if you’re not open to trying them   in new ways, you miss the opportunities and risk missing out.

Bigger Things on the Horizon

As academics, we must be open to even bigger things coming. Earlier, I mentioned AI video generation. While it’s not to the point that I would blindly trust AI to create new video content, we are using it to create opening videos for a MOOC I am preparing. And we are starting to look at how AI can be used to translate existing video content into new languages, all while maintaining my voice and mannerisms.

In the end, we must work with these technologies ourselves to prepare our students for the new business world to come. If our students aren’t ready for what the future holds, they could quickly become obsolete in important ways that we may not fully understand right now.

The takeaway is, if we as faculty are not staying abreast of disruptive technologies such as AI, we will face an even bigger task down the line. In short, as the famous quote says, innovate or die.

AUTHOR Robert Brunner , Associate Dean for Innovation and Chief Disruption Officer and Professor of Accountancy, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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6 ways to use Microsoft Copilot for end-of-school-year tasks

May 14, 2024.

By Microsoft Education Team

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The end of the school year is a hectic time for educators everywhere. Between reviewing content, completing assessments, and maintaining classroom management, it’s easy to feel the pressure of too many responsibilities and not enough time to accomplish everything.

Whether closing out the academic year in the northern hemisphere or preparing for the next one in the southern hemisphere, Microsoft Copilot offers innovative and efficient ways to complete many of the tasks that occupy these transitional times of year. From drafting student feedback to composing newsletters and offering planning suggestions for events, Copilot adapts to whatever task it’s asked. To get started, all you need is a basic understanding of how to access and use Copilot.

Start using Copilot for your end-of-school-year tasks

You can learn how to use Copilot by visiting Meet your AI assistant for education: Microsoft Copilot .

When you’re ready to get started, go to copilot.microsoft.com or download the iOS or Android mobile app.

Writing prompts for the end of the school year

Prompting Copilot to generate content requires practice. Including specific information in your prompt helps produce more relevant responses.

An effective Copilot prompt:

• Asks the tool to take on a role called a persona .
• Provides an objective  that tells the tool what to do or produce.
• Defines the audience  who will be using whatever Copilot generates.
• Includes context  that gives the tool background information.
• Sets boundaries  that limit or constrain responses.

Elements of a Good Prompt infographic which includes tips for writing prompts that produce more relevant responses.

Throughout this post, you’ll find sample prompts that include these components. We recommend borrowing inspiration from them and adjusting to make them fit your own classroom, or you can copy and paste the examples without modifications if you are just beginning.

Now let’s learn how Copilot can help you complete six common end-of-school-year tasks.

1. Craft student feedback at the end of the school year

Copilot can help you write end-of-school-year feedback in a style and tone that all students can understand. Simply craft a prompt that includes the subject area and details about the feedback you want to provide, and Copilot can draft a constructive, supportive statement written specifically for students. For example:

You are a fourth-grade teacher who is writing feedback on a student’s current reading skills. The student uses details to explain what text means but is unable to draw inferences in fiction. The student can identify in-text examples that illustrate a given theme but is unable to independently produce a theme without guidance. Write a short statement that explains this feedback to a student. Include a description about why using details is important and 1-2 ways to develop this skill. The paragraph should be written with plain text so that a fourth-grade student will understand.

You can always refine your prompt if the response is not what you expected. Simply include something like, “Re-write this feedback in Spanish” without selecting New topic , and Copilot will continue where you left off. Give it a try.

2. Write end-of-school-year reflections

Educators often write end-of-school-year newsletters for families, update class blogs with a final post, and draft reflections on school year goals. Copilot can assist with all these tasks and can help you create personalized, engaging visuals for your content. For example, you can use the following prompt to produce a summer newsletter for families.

You are the science department leader for a middle school in New York City. Draft a summer newsletter for families that includes an introduction that talks about the past year and 5 sections: Science Books for Young Adults, Science at Home, Science Summer Camps, Science Events in NYC, and NY Science Museums. Only include information that can be linked to a website to learn more. The newsletter should be written in plain text using an informal tone.

You can also share your experiences, memorable moments, and insights from the school year and Copilot will help you find creative ways to share this information with colleagues, families, and students.

3. Organize classroom materials at the end of the school year

The last few weeks of a school year includes packing up classrooms for the summer, collecting books and devices, and organizing materials for the next year. Copilot can create checklists or reminders for end-of-school-year tasks like these and offer suggestions that you might not even consider. For example:

You are a high school media specialist who checks out technology to administrators and educators. Write a checklist of the 3 most important things to do before returning each of the following devices: document camera, tablet, digital projector, games, and wires. Make each device a section heading and use bulleted lists for the content. Write the checklists so that the content is easily understood by people with varying levels of technological expertise.

Another way to use Copilot when you are organizing classroom materials is to ask for suggestions for efficient ways to declutter and prepare your classroom for the next school year.

4. Plan an end-of-school-year celebration

Many schools celebrate major milestones like the start of summer or moving from lower grades to higher grades with a party or ceremony. Copilot can be your personal planner and assist with brainstorming ideas for end-of-school-year events, awards ceremonies, or virtual gatherings. It can even suggest ways to be more inclusive in areas you might not have considered, like food options in the prompt below.

You are a guidance counselor in charge of helping rising eighth-grade students transition from middle school to high school. Draft a letter to middle school teachers that shares the biggest differences between middle school and high school. Include paragraphs on class schedules, touring the high school, meeting educators, extracurricular activities, and summer reading books. The letter should be written in a formal, conversational tone.

Whether you are creating invitations, planning activities, or drafting speeches, Copilot can be your creative collaborator.

5. Develop transition materials at the end of the school year

When students enter elementary school or move to middle or high school, everyone involved in the transition needs to know how to prepare for this change. Students need to know what to expect, families need to know how to support their children, and current educators need to provide relevant information. Copilot can help create transition materials so that everyone stays informed using a prompt like this example:

You can also use Copilot to write welcome letters, tips for success, or information about what to expect in the upcoming year.

6. Streamline parent communication at the end of the school year

Copilot can help you create templates for parent-teacher conferences at the end of the school year, as well as student progress updates, and letters to families. For example, you can ask Copilot to create a message to families about signing up for conferences with the following prompt.

You are a high school math teacher who teaches introductory algebra. Write a letter to families about parent-teacher conferences. Include an introductory paragraph that thanks families for their ongoing support and paragraphs about what will happen during the conferences, why conferences are important, who should attend, and how to prepare for the meeting. Conclude the letter with a paragraph about how to sign up for a conference slot. Write the letter using an approachable, informal tone.

Microsoft Copilot is a versatile AI tool for educators that adapts to your specific needs. To learn more about Microsoft’s AI solutions and resources, check out Smart learning: AI resources every educator should know and the  AI for educators learning path on Microsoft Learn. Most importantly, enjoy the end of the school year with your students and the time you saved by using Copilot. 

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