Information Literacy Faculty Toolkit: Examples of Rubrics

Ask yourself the following questions about using a rubric: 

• Will your rubric be used as a tool for grading the student work on a particular assignment? You can use it for assessing only the U Research outcomes (separate from grading).
• If used for grading, you might assign different weights to the criteria.  For instance, the "APA Format and Attribution of Sources" criterion may not be weighted as heavily as the "Content and Analysis" criterion.
• Your rubric will probably have criteria that are specific to your assignment, but may not correlate with any U Research outcomes. It is not necessary to align each of the rubric criteria with a U Research SLO.

​Examples of Rubrics

The following are examples of different types of rubrics. They are not ideal, but are presented to give ideas of different rubric formats.  They can be adapted to address the discipline-specific content and the learning outcomes you expect from students. There are many examples of rubrics on the web; the box on the right has links to rubric collections.

• Rubric with descriptions for each level of achievement.  The criteria have varied scoring weights. This rubric is specific to a research paper, but can be revised for other research assignments. 
• MC Information Literacy Rubric, based on the AAC&U VALUE Information Literacy Rubric - We included this generic rubric (not specific to a particular research product) in the QEP document. 
• Annotated Bibliography Rubrics  - Includes examples of assignments handouts and evaluation rubrics from a variety of institutions.
• Rubric with information literacy elements separated from the elements that assess the product.  This  rubric is posted on the RAILS site and is from Lincoln Memorial University.  Their QEP-designated classes are writing intensive.  The rubric evaluates the writing projects and separates the writing criteria and information literacy criteria.  May or may not be used to assign a grade.

There are many examples and collections of rubrics on the web.  Below are links to a few.  The best strategy may be to search the web and specify your discipline or assignment, limiting to .edu sites. (Example: lab experiment and rubric and site:edu or book review and rubric and site:edu)

AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) VALUE rubrics - the Critical Thinking rubric, Information Literacy rubric and the Inquiry & Analysis rubric may be particularly useful  

AALHE collection has a variety of rubrics across disciplines from many universities. 

DePaul University's Rubric Bank has links to various collections of rubrics.

RAILS: Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy Skills - Collection of campus-specific and assignment-specific rubrics.

University of Alabama -  list of rubrics from UA faculty (Writing has links useful in many disciplines) and non-UA sources.)