Creation and Validation of Low-Stakes Rubrics for K-12 Computer Science

With increased numbers of K-12 computing courses, we also see an increase in teachers new to the subject, making it difficult for them to properly assess student programming assignments. Many of these teachers require project-specific rubrics to help assess student learning. Researchers have attempted to create systematic, validated, and reliable rubrics for these courses with only minor success. In this research, we make an argument for the validity of our low-stakes computing rubrics. In doing so, we establish a validated method for creating a full-suite of project-based rubrics for K-12 computing courses, helping teachers, researchers, and practitioners make much-needed course materials. Evaluating these rubrics, we see grader consistency as well as heatmaps of where teachers are looking for computational thinking concepts in code.