Grading Rubric

Click on the grading rubric you need to grade a particular lab and save it to your computer. Standard labs are typical, experimental labs driven by hypotheses. Descriptive labs are are not driven by hypotheses, e.g., observational labs or labs about procedure. Designing labs is the category for labs in which students design their own experiments. Consult "How to use the Excel grading rubric" found below for explanations of the fixed/modifiable scale grading sheets.

How to use the Excel grading rubric:

The "fixed scale" grading sheet is based on a "poor" to "excellent" 5-point scale with the points on the scale equal to 0.0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0, respectively. These values are locked and are not changeable without unlocking the worksheet. You may only change the point values for each section of the lab report (see figure 1 below).

The "modifiable scale" grading sheet is based on a traditional "F" through "A" scale with numeric values between 0 and 100 assigned to points on the 5-point scale by the instructor. The cells showing the numeric values are below the letter grades and are the cells used to calculate the score for each of the criteria. These cells are unlocked and modifiable by the instructor (figure 2 below).

If you do not want students to see the actual numeric value assigned to each of the letter grades in a printout, you can hide them by doing the following:

• Choose Tools>Protection>Unprotect Sheet....
• Highlight the cells holding the numeric values underneath the letter grades.
• Choose Format>Cells.... Click on the Font tab and choose a white
  font color (the same color as the background of the worksheet.
• Alternately, you can choose the Font Color tool from the Formatting toolbar.
• Re-protect the sheet by choosing Tools>Protection>Protect Sheet....
  With the font the same color as the background, it will no longer
  show on a printout.

Note that the Excel rubrics are Excel workbooks with three worksheets each (accessed by the tabs at the bottom left of the workbook file, best seen if the window is maximized):

• The first sheet is titled, Indiv Student Sheet, and it assumes that all of the criteria under a particular lab report section (e.g., Discussion) are weighted equally. So, for example, if Discussion was weighted 20 points and has four criteria under it, each of the criteria would be worth up to 5 points. The total score for the section is calculated by adding the scores for all of the criteria (see Figure 2 below).
• The second sheet is titled, Indiv Student Sheet (partial), and it allows you to assign weightings to each of the criteria under a section. The total weighting for a lab report section is calculated by adding the individual criteria weightings. The individual criteria weightings and scores appear in gray while the section totals appear in black (see Figure 1 below).
• The third sheet is a template you can use to show summary scores for a whole class section.

Figure 1

Figure 2

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