It anticipates a plan of action, a teaching strategy. Each semester dozens of mentors may volunteer at different sites and at different times throughout the week. The university instructor in charge of the service-learning course must rely on the mentor's journal entries and other types of feedback to ascertain the quality and value of the experience for both the mentor and the mentee. The expectations and intentions of the university instructor and the mentor can easily evolve in divergent directions. Rubrics provide a useful means to assess quickly a mentor's writing and to reiterate consistently the criteria expected of him or her.
Rubrics are an assessment instrument laid out in a grid format.
Each cell of the matrix contains short phrases or sentences describing what must be done to attain those criteria at that level of achievement. By providing specific responses to written journal entries according to several, clearly defined criteria, mentors see immediately where they need to do to improve their performance. Moreover, by responding to each journal entry with a rubric, the criteria are constantly reiterated. Rubric assessments are also a very quick, efficient and an accurate way to evaluate. The written journal entry simply needs to be matched to the appropriate descriptor.