The marking rubrics on this page give general guidance on how to evaluate academic work, in particular in bioinformatics and computational biology courses and workshops.
Principles
Assessment provides “formative feedback”: students apply the rubrics to guide their own work, and the resulting work is assessed – with reference to the rubrics – regarding its achievements, and regarding aspects that need improvement. Such feedback can be self-assessment, peer-assessment and instructor assessment. No grades are recorded.
Evaluation is “summative feedback”. The rubrics are applied to quantify the achievement a grade is recorded.
Grades, Marks and GPA
How course marks are recorded.
| Level | │ | Letter grade | │ | Marks | │ | GPV† |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | A+ | 90% and more | 4.0 | |||
| ┌ | A | 85–89% | 4.0 | |||
| └Excellent | A– | 80–84% | 3.7 | |||
| . | ||||||
| ┌ | B+ | 77–79% | 3.3 | |||
| ├Good | B | 73–76% | 3.0 | |||
| └ | B– | 70–72% | 2.7 | |||
| . | ||||||
| ┌ | C+ | 67–69% | 2.3 | |||
| ├Adequate | C | 63–66% | 2.0 | |||
| └ | C– | 60–62% | 1.7 | |||
| . | ||||||
| ┌ | D+ | 57–59% | 1.3 | |||
| ├Marginal | D | 53–56% | 1.0 | |||
| └ | D– | 50–52% | 1.7 | |||
| . | ||||||
| . | ||||||
| Inadequate | F | Less than 50% | 0.0 |
† GPV: Grade Point Value.
Excellent and Outstanding
To excel at something means to leave expectation unsatisfied. In general, if you complete a task to all of its specifications, that’s excellent, and I will be glad to give you between 80 and 89% of the available marks (A- – A). But outstanding is in a different league. An outstanding achievement (A+) advances the field, it extends what has been discussed, it makes an original contribution, it improves on previous ideas, it is elegant, and it is inspiring. Outstanding contributions make the world a better place.
General Principles
Levels of achievement that apply across the board.
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | Advances the field: strong evidence of original thinking while organizing ideas in a lucid and rigorous manner; extends concepts of the subject matter; discovers non-obvious relationships and extensions to other domains. | |
| Excellent | Accomplished in every aspect: good organization; material is understood in broader context; capacity to analyze and synthesize; superior grasp of subject matter with sound critical evaluations; evidence of extensive knowledge base. | |
| Good | Knowledgeable and competent: evidence of fundamental understanding and operational grasp of subject matter; awareness of context; some evidence of critical capacity and analytic ability; evidence of familiarity with literature. | |
| Adequate | Basic proficiency: able to reproduce a majority of facts; basic understanding of the subject matter; ability to develop solutions to simple problems in the material; evidence of exposure to the literature. | |
| Marginal | Significant gaps: some evidence of familiarity with subject matter; not fully able to reproduce factual knowledge; some evidence that critical and analytic skills have been developed; vague knowledge of literature. | |
| Inadequate | Competence has not been achieved: insufficient understanding of subject matter; weakness in critical and analytic skills; limited or irrelevant use of literature. |
Note: These rubrics reflect the University of Toronto’s Grading Policies in principle but distinguish between (A–/A) and A+ levels of achievement.
In general, marks will be “holistic” i.e. a high-level achievement in one category can not simply compensate for an inferior achievement in another category. It is the overall quality, integrated over all categories that counts. Therefore it would not make sense to attempt a “marks-breakdown” by category. Marks negotiations that are based on isolated aspects of the rubrics on this page will be pointless - that’s not what the rubrics are for. Use them as a guide what you should be aiming for instead.
Reports present or explore a concept as a standalone piece of work. Sometimes reports document specific observations which must be presented according to general standards of completeness and reproducibility. But a report is never complete without an interpretation. The University of Toronto Writing Centre has general advice on Lab Reports.
Concepts
Assesment of concepts that are covered in a report.
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | Adds to expected concepts; balance between perspective and detail is exemplary. | |
| Excellent | Concepts complete; well balanced between broad perspective and crucial detail. | |
| Good | All main concepts present; granularity appropriate. | |
| Adequate | Contains most main concepts; too broad or too deep in parts. | |
| Marginal | Contains a few of the main concepts; granularity appears somewhat arbitrary. | |
| Inadequate | Contains a limited number of concepts and/or irrelevant ones; haphazard granularity; missing essential contents and/or adding trivia. |
Relationships
Assessment of how the relationships between concepts are covered and made explicit.
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | Original insights extend given relationships in a meaningful and rigorous way. | |
| Excellent | Meaningful insights; precise representation of relationships; annotated where necessary – no ambiguities. | |
| Good | Expected relationships are largely complete; relationships are meaningful and accurate; necessary annotations are generally present. | |
| Adequate | Missing some important relationships but the ones that are present are generally correct; annotations should be more comprehensive. | |
| Marginal | Many omissions; existing ones not fully thought through; annotations are generally missing and therefore the interpretation of some relations is vague. | |
| Inadequate | Trivial connections only and/or erroneous connections; meaning of relationships not clear and/or based only on opinion or conjecture. |
Organization
How well is the report structured?
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | Original insights extend given relationships in a meaningful and rigorous way. | |
| Excellent | Meaningful insights; precise representation of relationships; annotated where necessary – no ambiguities. | |
| Good | Expected relationships are largely complete; relationships are meaningful and accurate; necessary annotations are generally present. | |
| Adequate | Missing some important relationships but the ones that are present are generally correct; annotations should be more comprehensive. | |
| Marginal | Many omissions; existing ones not fully thought through; annotations are generally missing and therefore the interpretation of some relations is vague. | |
| Inadequate | Trivial connections only and/or erroneous connections; meaning of relationships not clear and/or based only on opinion or conjecture. |
Form
Form of the report
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | Original insights extend given relationships in a meaningful and rigorous way. | |
| Excellent | Meaningful insights; precise representation of relationships; annotated where necessary – no ambiguities. | |
| Good | Expected relationships are largely complete; relationships are meaningful and accurate; necessary annotations are generally present. | |
| Adequate | Missing some important relationships but the ones that are present are generally correct; annotations should be more comprehensive. | |
| Marginal | Many omissions; existing ones not fully thought through; annotations are generally missing and therefore the interpretation of some relations is vague. | |
| Inadequate | Trivial connections only and/or erroneous connections; meaning of relationships not clear and/or based only on opinion or conjecture. |
Some tasks require development of R code, and many tasks require a code appendix for documentation.
Code
Principles for designing, writing, and documenting code.
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | All features of an Excellent submission are present. In addition: code is elegant, original, and/or introduces idioms / patterns / libraries that improve on previously established solutions. | |
| Excellent | Complete, correct, and authoritative documentation is present; Variables are expressively named; astute use is made of external libraries and packages while limiting dependencies; coding standards have been mastered and are at all times applied in a way that is appropriate to the code’s objective; confident use of language features, but not overly idiomatic – code remains accessible to less experienced collaborators; data structures and control flow are efficient; functions are defensive when taking in data and parameters, but rigorous in output; code is conscientious in error handling, with a healthy approach to "fail early" rather than making assumptions; all requirements have been fulfilled and all interfaces have been fully specified; unit tests (and integration tests where appropriate) fully cover the code. | |
| Good | Most features of an Excellent submission are present but all requirements are fulfilled, all interfaces are fully specified, and the code is fully tested. | |
| Adequate | Many features of an Excellent submission are present but all requirements are fulfilled, all interfaces are fully specified, and the code is fully tested. | |
| Marginal | Some features of an Excellent submission are present but all requirements are fulfilled, all interfaces are fully specified. There may be some omissions in test coverage. | |
| Inadequate | Code does not run and/or produces incorrect results and/or does not fully implement specifications and/or has its interfaces not fully specified and/or there are significant omissions in test coverage. Note: any of these will justify a mark of "Inadequate". |
Applies to molecular scenes and data plots.
Images
Images that enhance the document.
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | All features of an Excellent submission are present. In addition: a novel visual paradigm is introduced that improves on previously established solutions. The image tells a story. | |
| Excellent | The image or figure has been prepared with care; molecular images are shown in side-by-side stereo, with a separation of equivalent points of 6 to 10 cm on the computer screen. Color is used carefully for emphasis, to highlight relationships and/or catagory membership, or to show quantitative relationships. Good care is taken to use a pleasing colour scheme. The scene is uncluttered, and places irrelevant details into the backround through lighting, colouring, or other methods of presentation. Key landmarks are labelled. R-plots have titles, axis-labels that name the dimension that is shown and its units; error bars are shown; legends are comprehensive and carefully placed. Avoids GGplot2 defaults. All visual elents are justfied and required by the data-narrative. Explanatory captions are present that add information to the image and – where appropriate – refer to specific details (more general observations belong in the body of the document, not into the figure captions). Code that has produced the image or figure is fully documented and presented in an appendix – the image is reproducible. | |
| Good | Most features of an Excellent submission are present. | |
| Adequate | Many features of an Excellent submission are present but title, axis-labels, legends are all there. | |
| Marginal | Some features of an Excellent submission are present and some of the essential elements (title, labels, legends, caption) are missing. | |
| Inadequate | Image does not show what it is needed for. Visual elements are ambiguous. Figure contains non-trivial errors. Careless. |
If a journal is a deliverable of a course and will be graded, all rules regarding plagiarism and other academic misconduct apply in full. In particular:
Note: Only journal entries that were written concurrently with the activity they describe will be evaluated for credit. Do not write paper notes and consolidate them at a later time, but keep your journal as you actually work through the tasks and units.
The most important general principle for your journal is: you are writing this journal for yourself, not for us. We evaluate whether your writing is effective for this purpose.
Journal
What makes a good lab journal…
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | Engaging; illuminating reference for others; maximally concise yet comprehensive; easy to navigate and search; written concurrently with the course activities; improves on suggested form. Not only a complete documentation of your activities, it might even be a valuable resource for others. | |
| Excellent | Complete; concise; reproducible; cross-references important sections; written concurrently with the course activities; adheres to suggested form; grammar and spelling flawless. Complete documentation, and a valuable resource for yourself at a future time, to revisit what you have done. | |
| Good | At times too wordy and/or too brief; lacking or overusing cross-references; written concurrently with the course activities; mostly adheres to suggested form; grammar and spelling good. Documents your activities basically without gaps and has significant portions that look like they would be useful to return to. | |
| Adequate | Noticeably too wordy and/or too brief; frequently lacking or overusing cross-references; written concurrently with the course activities; large parts adhere to suggested form; grammar and spelling still acceptable. Generaly documents what was done, and contains some contets that may be a useful reference. | |
| Marginal | Generally too wordy and/or too brief; lack of or indiscriminate use of cross-references; however always written concurrently with the course activities; significant issues with form, grammar and/or spelling. Formulaic, not describing actual experience. Describes objectives, not what was actually done. Barely useful for documentation or future reference. | |
| Inadequate | Incoherent, incomplete, disorganized, disregarding suggested form, and/or not written concurrently with the described activities. Copy/paste contents from learning unit objectives. Neither useful as documentation, nor as a rference for yourself |
Your recorded insights …
Insights! capture ideas that have made your work meaningful.
| Level | │ | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | Engaging, memorable, inspiring, with significant benefit to most readers. Highly original insights. Effortlessly deriving principles from actual activities in the greater context. Complete coverage focussing on the most essential aspects. Easy to navigate. Possibly modelling an improvement to the suggested form. | |
| Excellent | Overall well written, generally useful to the reader. Original. Basically complete. Referenced to actual activities for context. Form as required. | |
| Good | Writing usually well focussed. Some spelling- or grammar errors and/or errors of terminology. Most writing show original thinking. Large parts of the material covered. Usually referenced to actual activities. Only few lapses in form. | |
| Adequate | Majority of material is focussed. Some parts not plausibly motivated. Some writing is formulaic or mechanical. Significant opportunities to improve reference to context and motivation. The number of spelling- or grammar errors and/or errors of terminology is noticeable. Form still adequate. | |
| Marginal | Lacking focus. Only a few thoughts are plausible to the reader. Significant number of spelling- or grammar errors and/or errors of terminology. Needs improvement of context, motivation, and/or relevance to actual activities. Spotty coverage or mechanical, unreflected writing. Little evidence of original thought. Form needs improvement. | |
| Inadequate | Cryptic, superficial, irrelevant, rambling, formulaic, erroneous, spotty, and/or lacking form or missing required elements. |
[END]