college reflection essay rubric

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Teaching Commons > Teaching Guides > Feedback & Grading > Rubrics > Assessing Reflection

Assessing reflection or reflective processes can be particularly challenging. A few examples of this challenge are:

• If reflection is meant to be a intimately personal experience, do we alter it simply by defining standards for assessment, making it a less personal and externally imposed process?
• Assessment of reflection depends on written or spoken language. How might this handicap students who are less familiar with conventional and discipline or context-specific linguistic expectations in a manner that has nothing to do with those students’ abilities to engage in refection?
• For example, will your students who are non-native speakers, or come from backgrounds with less exposure to common academic linguistic forms have a more difficult time demonstrating their ability to reflect well?

As there is not just one type of student in your classes/programs, there is not one answer to designing high quality assessment techniques for assessing reflection. You must design your reflection assignments as well as your assessments carefully considering your own context.

A few things to consider when you are designing your assessment strategies are:

• What is the purpose of the reflection?
• Are you interested in the process of reflection, the products of reflection or both?
• How will the assessment task itself promote reflection or reflective practices?
• How will you make judgements about reflection?
• How will you make it clear to students what you expect of them in terms of their reflection?

Examples of Models for Assessing Reflection

Hatton and smith (1995).

Hatton and Smith described four progressive levels of reflection, with each increased level indicating more/better reflective processes.

• Descriptive – this is not reflection, but simply describes events that occurred with no attempt to describe ‘why.’
• Descriptive Reflection – description includes reasons, but simply reports reasons.
• Dialogic Reflection – reflection as a personal dialogue (questioning, considering alternatives).
• wonder, what if, perhaps….
• Critical Reflection – takes into account context in which events occur, questions assumptions, considers alternatives, thinks about consequences of decisions/actions on others, and engages in reflective skepticism.

Ash and Clayton (2004)

Ash and Clayton describe a guided process for facilitating and assessing reflection. These researchers focus specifically on service learning, but their model could be applied to other types of learning experiences.

• Students describe the experience.
• Analyze the experience(s) from different categories of  perspectives based on the learning objective:
• Identify learning in each category
• Artic ulate learning by developing a well-developed statement of learning (articulated learni ng), using the four guiding questions that structure articulated learning as a guide:
• What did I learn?
• How, specifically, did I learn it?
• Why does this learning matter, or why is it significant?
• In what ways will I use this learning?
• Analyze/revise articulated le arning statements by applying standards of critical thinking through: 
• Student self-assessment
• Instructor feedback
• Finalize the articulated learning statements, aiming to fulfill all learning objectives in each categories and meet standards of critical thinking.
• Undertake new learning experiences, including when feasible, taking action on articulated learning statements to test the initial conclusions reached.
• Continue the reflection process, articulating additional complexity of the learning in articulated learning statements when possible.

Reflective Essay Rubric

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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)
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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.

• Library Guides
• IRWC Interactive Rubric for Written Communication
• Interactive Rubric for Written Communication
• Reflective Essay

Interactive Rubric for Written Communication: Reflective Essay

• Introduction
• 1.2. Thesis
• 1.3. Context
• 1.4. Audience
• 2.1. Information & Data
• 2.2. Conceptual Knowledge
• 2.3. Examples & Illustrations
• 2.4. Sources
• 2.4.1. Relevance
• 2.4.2. Authority
• 3.2. Evidence
• 3.3. Specificity
• 3.4. Creativity
• 3.5. Criticality
• 3.6. Reflexivity
• 3.7. Evaluation
• 4.1. Section
• 4.2. Paragraph
• 4.3. Sequence
• 4.4. Cohesive Ties
• 5.1. Clarity
• 5.2.1. Mood
• 5.2.2. Mode
• 5.2.3. Narrative Form
• 5.2.4. Voice (Active/Passive)
• 5.4. Vocabulary
• 5.4.1. Academic Vocabulary
• 5.4.2. Technical Vocabulary
• 5.4.3. Inclusive Language
• 5.5. Literary Devices
• 5.6. Referencing
• 5.6.1. Citations
• 5.6.2. Reference List
• 5.6.3. Quotations
• 5.6.4. Application
• 5.6.5. Paraphrasing & Plagiarism
• 5.7. Formatting
• 5.7.1. Font
• 5.7.2. Spacing
• 5.8. Length
• 6.1. Sentences
• 6.1.1. Fragments
• 6.1.2. Run-on Sentences
• 6.1.3. Agreement
• 6.2. Word Classes
• 6.2.1. Pronouns
• 6.2.2. Prepositions
• 6.2.3. Articles
• 6.2.4. Conjunctions
• 7.1. Spelling
• 7.2. Punctuation
• 7.2.1. Apostrophes
• 7.2.2. Full Stops
• 7.2.3. Capitalisation
• 7.2.4. Quotation Marks
• 7.2.5. Commas & Colons
• 7.2.6. Abbreviations
• 7.2.7. Other (e.g., Hyphens)
• 7.3. Editing
• Persuasive Essay
• For Lecturers

Reflective essays

Genre: A reflective essay reflects critically on personal experience and opinion in light of broader literature, theories or subject materials. As conventions and expectations may differ across contexts, always check with your lecturer for the specific conventions of the genre.

Context: This short reflective essay and reply was written in response to a weekly assessment task in an atypical development unit that required students to reflect on their own position in relation the following question :

Do Barbie Dolls affect girls' body image? If you had (or have) a young daughter, would you allow her to play with Barbie or Bratz dolls? Why or why not?

Reflective essay example 

Response: Barbie Dolls and Body Image: Just Child’s Play? This title links to the topic of the writing and raises a question that implies a thesis .

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• Last Updated: Apr 3, 2024 3:56 PM
• URL: https://libguides.jcu.edu.au/irwc

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Assessment rubrics

Rubrics allow for quicker and more consistent marking. This can be extremely helpful in reflection, which can feel as if it needs to be assessed by instinct alone. A well-defined rubric will make marking of reflection systematic and support both you and the reflectors.

Rubrics make life easier for the reflectors and for you as a marker

There are many general benefits from using a rubric, which extend beyond reflection. For facilitators a rubric can:

• help ensure consistency in the grades given
• reduce uncertainty which may come with grading
• reduce time spent grading
• identify clear strengths and weaknesses in work and therefore make feedback easier

Moreover, students report that having a well-defined rubric available before they engage with an assessment makes it clearer what is expected of them. Other benefits can be:

• More measurable feedback
• Students can more easily identify specific areas which they need to work on

Sometimes student work can fall outside the scope of a rubric – however a rubric will give you a place to start

While the usefulness of rubrics are widely accepted, there are some criticisms arguing that rubrics can fail to make the marking easier as students’ work does not fit onto the predefined categories and will have to be assessed holistically, rather than by a set of components. Moreover, it is argued that a piece of work is often more than the sum of its parts.

These are both fair criticisms. Sometimes you will receive reflections that are hard to mark against your criteria or are indeed better than your rubric would suggest. However, having a rubric will give you a place to start for these reflections.

If you find that your rubric consistently misses aspects this would suggest the criteria need updated.

Choose a holistic or analytic rubric – the analytic will make the benefits more pronounced

When choosing your rubric, there are two general approaches: holistic and analytical.

For each level of performance highlighted in the rubrics, it can be helpful to provide an example of that level (for example a series of reflective sentences or an extract).

Holistic rubrics are general levels of performance

The holistic rubric gives a general description of the different performance levels, for example novice, apprentice, proficient, or distinguished.

The levels can take many different names, and you can choose as many levels as you find appropriate. It can be recommended to include the same number of levels as the number of grades available for students, for example a level for failing and a level for each passing grade.

Analytic rubrics take into account performance on each assessment criterion

The analytic rubric allows you to identify a reflector’s performance against each of your chosen and well-defined assessment criteria.

This can be helpful for you in the marking process and when giving feedback to the reflector as you can tell them exactly what areas they are performing well in and need to improve on.

You may consider giving a student a mark for each criterion and take an average of that for the overall mark. Alternatively, predefine a weight or a set of points available for each criterion and calculate the overall mark according to this. If the latter method is used, you should also make the weightings available to students at the same time as the rubric.

Test your reflective rubric and improve it

It is unlikely that the first rubric you make is going to capture everything you need, and you may find you need to update it. This is natural for rubrics in all areas, and especially around the area of reflection, which for many is new.  Revisiting your rubric is particularly worth doing after the first time it is used.

When using your rubric you can ask yourself:

• What does this rubric make easier about marking and/or feedback (if anything)?
• What is still challenging when I am using this rubric?
• Are there clear gaps in my identified criteria or rubric which I now see are needed for what I consider essential in the assignment?
• What do I need to change (if anything)?
• How do students seem to react to my rubric?

Test if others would give students the same marks with your rubric

Rubrics that work well for you have a lot of value, but to ensure that you get an optimal rubric it is important that others using your rubric would give the same grade to the same reflection as you do – ensuring that your rubric has inter-rater reliability.

This is important for two reasons:

• It reinforces the validity of your rubric and ensures that, if there are multiple markers for your reflective assessments, the grade does not vary by which person is marking
• It ensures that students who see the rubric will be able to accurately produce work according to the level they are striving towards.

Holistic rubrics

Moon’s (2004) four levels of reflective writing.

These four levels distinguish between four types of written accounts you might see a reflector produce.

In this case the three top levels might pass a reflective assignment, where descriptive writing would not.

Taken from Jennifer Moon’s book: A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning (2004)

Reflective writing rubric

These four levels are different and highlight four alternative approaches to reflective journaling. While they are specifically developed for journal use, the levels will generalise to other types of written reflection.

The rubric is develop by Chabon and Lee-Wilkerson (2006) when evaluating reflective journals of students undertaking a graduate degree in communication sciences and disorders.

Analytical rubric

Reflection evaluation for learners’ enhanced competencies tool (reflect) rubric.

This analytic rubric has been developed and empirically tested and improved by Wald et al. (2012). It was developed specifically for medical education, but can easily be used elsewhere. The rubric is designed using theoretical considerations from a range of thinkers around reflection as Moon, Schön, Boud and Mezirow.

This rubric has been used in empirical studies and a high inter-rater reliability has been established.

There are two components to the rubric. The standard rubric and an additional axis. The second axis should be used when a reflector reaches ‘Critical reflection’ and then distinguishes between two types of learning, which reflection can help surface.

Adding the additional axis can help you to differentiate between what kind of learning the student has obtained as well as reminding us that reflection does not need to always create new practice – becoming aware of why one’s practice works can be equally valuable.

Standard Rubric

Axis II for critical reflection

Rubric for reflection using different criteria

This rubric form Jones (n.d) gives another approach to marking reflection. Using five criteria it manages to capture a lot of what is relevant when marking reflection as well as giving clear qualities highlighted for each level of reflection.

Chabon, S. and Lee-Wilkerson, D. (2006). Use of journal writing in the assessment of CSD students’ learning about diversity: A method worthy of reflection. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 27(3), 146-158.

Dawson, P. (2017) Assessment rubrics: towards clearer and more replicable design, research and practice. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(3), 347-360.

Jones, S. (n.d.) Using reflection for assessment . Office of Service Learning, IUPUI. (link to PDF on external site)

Moon J.A. (2004). A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and practice. Routledge.

Kohn, A. (2006). The trouble with rubrics. English Journal, 95(4).

Wald, H.S., Borkan, J.M., Scott Taylor, J., Anthony, D., and Reis, S.P. (2012) Fostering and evaluating reflective capacity in medical education: Developing the REFLECT rubric for assessing reflective writing. Academic Medicine, 87(1), 41-50.

we are made of stories

• Analysis Essay Draft: Writing Our Way Out
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Final Reflection Assignment

Storytelling Connections

Spring 2024

Final Reflection

due: May 3, 2024

Stories both describe our understanding of life and its social structures AND create our understanding of life and its social structures.

Think about your experiences when telling stories with the youth in detention.

Think about  what you read in “The Body Keeps the Score,” “ Small Things Like These,” and “Are Prisons Obsolete?”

Part 1: Pre-writing

What was the story you had in your mind about incarcerated youth BEFORE you started going to visit and tell stories? Consider Davis’s claim on p.18 that it is practically impossible to avoid “prison films.”  Did you have a movie that shaped your thinking?

Has the story in your mind about incarcerated youth and about prisons in general changed? (write a brief reflection)

Collect examples of assumptions and stories—your own and also cultural assumptions—that you can find in your own reflective posts, and in the texts we read this semester.  Consider these possible exhibits for your essay portfolio.

Collect examples of new insights and changed behavior you see, in yourself and in the texts. Also consider these as exhibits for your essay portfolio.

Part 2: Portfolio of Exhibits: Put the written reflections, blog posts, stories from the class-created booklet “Campfire Stories” and other examples into a Portfolio of Exhibits.   Each piece of writing should have its own page, and you should identify the writing by author, date and, if it is published anywhere on the web, where I could find it.  (Example: Prep Note by Kaylee, April 19 https://blog.richmond.edu/storytelling2023/2024/04/19/prep-note-4-19civil-w/)

For quotations from the published books you read, create a section just for quotes and their page numbers. (Remember the Compost Heap from fall semester? You are basically making  one page of your Portfolio of Exhibits a “ Compost Page “)

Part 3: Write an essay

Design a thesis statement that tells how the story you tell yourself about incarceration has changed. You might focus on your own personal stories and connections, or on societal stories, or use a combination of both. Write a reflective essay that draws on examples to illustrate what specifically has changed for you, and in what ways.

The essay should be 5-6 pages, should analyze some quotes from your exhibits,  using in-text citation format.  The essay should prove or illuminate your thesis statement.

Part 4: Turn in for a grade

By noon on May 3, turn in your essay + exhibit portfolio for a grade.

I will use this rubric.

FOR HELP WITH FORMAT, see this example

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