CEN4021: Software Engineering II

Written Communication Rubric

The ability of students to produce a written technical document and communicate with a range of audiences will be assessed according to the following rubric. To pass the course, a rating of "Effective" or higher is expected.

This rubric was originally designed for a technical report. Application to other document organizations, such as a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) or Software Design Specification (SDS) may require some interpretation. For example, the format for a SDS does not include a Conclusion section, but does contain summary material in the Introduction. Also, within each section, there should be a logical development from beginning to end.

The rubric will be applied to the entire document. If the writing of a single report such as a SDS is divided among several team members, each team member will also be assessed on a portion that she/he wrote and submitted individually. The team and individual authors should take care that the division of effort and the organization of the document allow each team member to author sufficient content to support assessment of all items in the rubric. Please contact the instructor for approval if it seems that this is not possible within the structure specified for the document.

	Highly Effective	Effective	Ineffective
Content Scope	Clear &complete description of scope, goals, and background	Overall domain described clearly, but several components missing	Unclear or incomplete description of scope, goals or background
Quality	Content (such as requirement descriptions in SRS) legitimate and follow correct form	Some content deviates slightly from correct form or lack detail.	Invalid or unusable content, or content in poor form.
Documentation	Proper citations and inclusion of supporting documentation	Some missing citations or supporting documentation.	Significant lack of citations or supporting documentation.
Technical	Grammatically correct, with very few grammatical errors; appropriate word choices for audience.	Some grammatical errors, colloquialisms, or inappropriate language for audience.	Frequent grammatical errors. Inappropriate language or frequent use of colloquialisms or jargon.
Analysis Investigation	Identification of quality and relevance data and sources. Appropriate information gathered.	A few weaker or tangential sources included. Some inapplicable information from sources included.	Poor or irrelevant sources included. Inapplicable information included.
Argument	Explanations logically follow from premises and reasoning.	A few failures in chain of logic or reasoning of explanations.	Lack of valid reasoning in arguments and explanations.
Target	Audience identified and writing is appropriately to audience level.	A few instances of inappropriate writing for level or target audience.	Significant quantity of writing is inappropriate for target audience.
Organization Introduction	Clear and complete statement of topic and overall structure of document.	Statement Topic vague, structure definition weak, missing details.	Topic ambiguous.Filure to identify significance of topic. Failure to clearly convey document structure.
Relevance	Content is relevant to topic.	Some content is tangential to topic.	Significant content is irrelevant to topic.
Accuracy	Facts and information presented are accurate and true to source.	Some inaccurate interpretation or portrayal of information.	Significant inaccuracy in use or presentation of fact or information.
Synthesis	Facts and premises are analyzed to lead to valid conclusions.	A few analyses of facts do not adequately lead to conclusions.	Significant lack of connection between facts and conclusions.
Conclusion	Concise and complete summary of conclusions and points in document supporting conclusion.	Complete summary of topic conclusion, but a few points not included or referenced.	Failure to completely identify conclusion or. failure to adequately summarize critical points.
Notes

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