This Work in Progress describes initial efforts at Ohio Northern University to develop rubrics for assessing student work on a client-based term project in an introductory programming course sequence. Initially, traditional analytic rubrics - where each criterion contains a descriptor for each level in the performance rating scale - were used in a summative fashion to provide feedback. At face value, rubrics of this variety are convenient as they contain qualitative descriptions of the performance criteria used for evaluation, reducing the task of grading to just the stroke of a pen in the appropriate column. Unfortunately, an analytic rubric is usually not designed to communicate precise comments for each dimension, and its summative use disempowers students from applying the received feedback towards improving the project. This all too typical approach toward using rubrics in the classroom can easily have a negative impact. At a minimum, there is a level of incompleteness present that cannot be resolved within the context of the course. Worse, a student being told that they did not perform well on a particular criterion could interpret the message as one of personal failure, leading to possible persistence issues.
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