Iterative Development and Validation of Rubrics for Assessing Educational Robotics Projects

Rubrics play a crucial role in assessing learning outcomes in educational robotics projects by providing structured and transparent criteria to evaluate both technical and transversal competences. This study presents an iterative process for designing, implementing, and refining assessment rubrics for use in an educational robotics project within an engineering course. The aim was to improve the clarity, consistency, and construct validity of the evaluation process while ensuring alignment with the course competences. A comparison of ten student projects revealed that the holistic rubric may be affected by evaluator subjectivity and produced slightly higher scores than the analytic versions. The initial analytic rubric was overly restrictive and failed to recognise the varietyof technical solutions. The revised analytic rubric, comprising 14 well-defined evaluative criteria and updated performance descriptions, achieved stronger alignment with holistic rubric and greater internal consistency. Our findings suggested that iteratively refining rubric improves coherence, transparency, and formative feedback, contributing to more valid and equitable evaluation in learning contexts. We are currently working on validating this latest version with other instructors and exploring the integration of artificial intelligence tools to partially automate the evaluation process, provide personalised feedback, and enhance accuracy and the formative value of the evaluation.