Aside from being a word I struggle to say – I have difficulty with blending consonants br and pr – it also feels as if rubrics are something workplace learning has difficulty with.

I asked some people a little while ago what their rubrics were for their learning activity. Rubrics have been defined as:

“a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students’ constructed responses”

JAMES POPHAM

We talked about the challenge for workplace learning. On one hand, we’re expected to be academic, educational, detached from the business, residing in a world of knowledge acquisition. This world expects qualification and assessment; you will hear people being called students and your offer exists in an academy.

On the other hand, workplace learning is expected to be a business partner, focused on results and the bottom line, helping the organisation develop a learning culture that drives a constantly improving model of performance and behaviour.

Working in such a schizophrenic function, it’s no wonder that the business doesn’t know how we work and whether we’re doing a good job.

What would your rubrics be? Or do you describe them as performance standards?