2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Fair assessment of open-ended student work is often considered one of the most difficult aspects of teaching. If the assignment is over-constrained with specific criteria in a rubric, it may limit student creativity, but without guidelines, students may not include necessary items to produce accurate and professional work. Single-point rubrics are a proposed compromise. The “single point” establishes the minimal expectations of the assignment. Then, during grading, the instructor leaves feedback to document items that resulted in a loss of points in that category or evidence of work beyond expectations. This differs from a traditional rubric which pre-establishes thresholds for categories such as “Above” or “Meets Expectations.” In the Introduction to Environmental Engineering course at College Y, a series of “mini-projects” are used to expose students to wider environmental engineering practices. The project series aims to provide student practice for each of the three ABET communication models (visual, written, and oral). These projects, implemented for three years, are each graded using single-point rubrics. This paper details the assignment and rubric structure, grade distributions from single-point rubric grading, and reflections from faculty and students regarding best practices for this rubric modality.