Capstone Rubric
One rubric for all three capstones in this part — the Communication Portfolio (capstone-project-portfolio.md), the Translation Challenge (capstone-project-translation.md), and the Documentation Sprint (capstone-project-documentation.md). Use it for instructor grading or, just as usefully, for self-assessment.
Read this before you write, not after. The rubric is the external criterion that lets you see your own work past the curse of knowledge (Chapter 2) — you read your intention, not your sentence (Chapter 12). Walk the dimensions one at a time, top-down, score each honestly before moving on, and find each piece's single weakest dimension: the one whose repair will improve it most. That is the dimension your revision should spend on.
How to Use It
The rubric scores six dimensions across four performance levels. The dimensions are listed in the order you should assess them — the same top-down logic as Chapter 12's editing hierarchy. Audience fit and structure are load-bearing; fixing them often deletes a dozen smaller problems. Surface clarity and design come later, because polishing a sentence in a paragraph you're about to cut is wasted work.
- For self-assessment: for each piece, mark the level that honestly describes it on each dimension. Resist two temptations — defending the piece ("what I meant was…", which is exactly what the reader can't see) and declaring it hopeless. Then name the single weakest dimension and the revision it implies.
- For instructor grading: score each dimension. The suggested weighting reflects that audience fit, clarity, and structure are the heart of the book; tilt it by capstone (Translation weights audience fit; Documentation weights structure and accuracy).
Performance levels: 4 — Excellent (the standard this book teaches; ready to ship to a real reader) · 3 — Proficient (solid, a few fixable gaps) · 2 — Developing (the idea is there but a key dimension fails the reader) · 1 — Inadequate (the reader can't use it, or it misleads them).
Suggested weighting (default): Audience fit ×3 · Clarity ×2 · Structure ×2 · Accuracy & citation honesty ×2 · Revision evidence ×2 · Design & presentation ×1. (Total 60 points. Retune per capstone as noted above.)
The Rubric
1. Audience fit (the most important dimension — assess first)
| 4 — Excellent | 3 — Proficient | 2 — Developing | 1 — Inadequate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every choice — vocabulary, structure, length, level of detail — is visibly made for this reader. An expert gets precision; a manager gets the decision first; the public gets a hook and one analogy. The jargon level exactly matches what the audience shares. | Mostly fits the reader, with a slip or two — a stray undefined term, a slightly buried point — that a reader could push past. | One register aimed at everyone. The piece is "dumbed down" or "smarted up" rather than re-conceived for the reader; the wrong thing leads. | Ignores the reader entirely. Jargon at the public; a method wall at a busy manager; the reader can't use it. |
2. Clarity (sentence- and word-level — saying what you mean in the fewest words)
| 4 — Excellent | 3 — Proficient | 2 — Developing | 1 — Inadequate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sentences deliver, they don't excavate. Active where it serves; no nominalizations doing a verb's job; no bloat or empty intensifiers. Every sentence earns its place; the prose is invisible and the reader notices only the content. | Generally clear, with occasional wordiness, hedging, or a nominalization that could be a verb. The meaning always arrives, sometimes a beat late. | Frequent bloat, passive-by-default, jargon where plain words exist. The reader works to extract the meaning. | The reader can't reliably tell what a sentence means. Tangled syntax, undefined terms, contradictions. |
3. Structure (organized for how the reader reads — scan, search, skip)
| 4 — Excellent | 3 — Proficient | 2 — Developing | 1 — Inadequate | |---|---|---|---|---| | Organized for the reader, not the writer's discovery order. The point/conclusion/recommendation is findable fast (inverted pyramid where it fits); headings signpost; one idea per paragraph; each piece self-contained. For docs: one clean Diátaxis mode per document. | Sound structure with a soft spot — a slightly buried conclusion, a heading that under-signals, a paragraph carrying two ideas. | Follows the order the writer discovered the material, not the order the reader needs. Conclusion is buried; the reader hunts for the point. | No discernible structure, or modes tangled (a doc that is tutorial + reference + explanation at once). The reader is lost. |
4. Design & presentation (documents people want to read; the artifact as a whole)
| 4 — Excellent | 3 — Proficient | 2 — Developing | 1 — Inadequate | |---|---|---|---|---| | Hierarchy, white space, and consistent typography serve the reader (Chapter 10). Figures and captions interpret, not just label (Chapter 9). For the portfolio: a clear front door, deliberate order (strongest first, distinctive last), per-piece annotations, coherent finish; the presentation is invisible. | Clean and consistent, with a minor lapse — one inconsistent heading style, a caption that labels instead of interprets, a slightly cluttered slide. | Inconsistent or cluttered enough to distract; captions don't interpret; the portfolio is a loose collection with a weak front door. | A file dump, a wall of text, or a container that upstages the work. The reader judges the whole by the first messy thing they hit. |
5. Accuracy & citation honesty (the ethical floor — non-negotiable)
| 4 — Excellent | 3 — Proficient | 2 — Developing | 1 — Inadequate | |---|---|---|---|---| | Every claim is true and supported; uncertainty and caveats are stated honestly (no smooth sentence hiding a weak result). Sources cited cleanly; composites/samples labeled; borrowed code attributed; examples actually run. Translations differ in depth, never in the underlying claims. | Accurate, with a small lapse — one caveat under-stated, one citation thin but real, one example untested. | Overclaims in places (certainty the evidence doesn't support), or a source is vague where it should be specific. | Fabrication: invented data, sources, DOIs, or behavior; plagiarism; documentation describing what the code doesn't do; a public version overclaiming what the expert version withholds. This caps the whole grade regardless of other dimensions. |
6. Revision evidence (the portfolio's deepest claim — "I can see and fix my own writing")
| 4 — Excellent | 3 — Proficient | 2 — Developing | 1 — Inadequate | |---|---|---|---|---| | Every piece was revised at least once, and the revision changed meaning or structure, not just spelling. At least one visible before/after shows a real fix (a buried point surfaced, a method wall demoted). The growth narrative / reflection shows, with checkable evidence, what changed and why. | Most pieces revised structurally; one rests on light polish. The before/after or reflection is present but thin. | Revision is surface-only — spell-check and a once-over. The draft's shape (buried point, method-first order) still shows. | No evidence of revision. First drafts passed off as finished; the reflection only claims growth ("I improved a lot") without showing it. |
Scoring and Next Steps
| Score (of 60) | Reading | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 52–60 | Excellent — ship it to a real reader. | Tune the single weakest dimension and publish/submit. |
| 42–51 | Proficient — solid with fixable gaps. | Revise the one or two dimensions scoring 2–3; re-check audience fit and structure first. |
| 30–41 | Developing — a key dimension fails the reader. | Find the lowest-scoring high-leverage dimension (audience fit or structure) and make a structural revision, not a surface one (Chapter 12). |
| Below 30, or any 1 on accuracy | Inadequate — the reader can't use it or is misled. | Address accuracy first (it caps the grade), then rebuild structure and audience fit before touching the prose. |
The discipline that makes this rubric work: don't average six scores into a vague "pretty good." Find the single weakest dimension of each piece — the load-bearing problem — and fix that first. A structural fix can cascade: leading a data memo with the recommendation instead of the method (Chapter 27) repairs structure, length, and audience fit in one move. That is the difference between flailing at a draft and revising it. Score honestly, fix the load-bearing dimension, and let the work carry the claim.