Assessing online assignments in the browser: Introducing Rubrick

A few weeks back I linked to the Mozilla Foundation’s JetPack for Learning Design Challenge, and suggested that it might be good fun to assemble a team from the community of ProfHacker readers. Regular writers Jeff McClurken and Alex Jarvis, guest author Heather Whitney, and generally awesome people Thomas Brown, Mike Garcia, and Patrick Murrayjohn banded together to develop a proposal around the browser-based assessment of online work, which for now we’ve code-named Rübrick.

As we see it, Rübrick will have the following features:

• Grade right from your browser–no more switching apps, or even switching tabs
• Builds on familiar technology such as Google Docs, so should be robust and lightweight
• Fully customizable
• Cloud-based storage, so you can grade anywhere you can see the internet.
• Will make both faculty grading and peer- or self-assessment more structured, efficient, and easier to explain.

We’ve got mockups, plus a proof-of-concept screencast that shows it should be possible to build such a thing without too much sweating. The main goal in the next phase of the project would be making the interface simple and the entire thing stable.

What would you like to see in a browser-based assessment tool? Let us know in comments.