Engineering Notebook Rubrics

The Engineering Notebook Rubric is the tool judges use to score notebooks at an event. This article explains what the rubric looks for and how it is organized, and provides both letter and A4 sizes for download. It is written for students, coaches, and judges.

For how judges review notebooks during an event, see Judging Engineering Notebooks. For the summaries a team submits alongside its notebook, see Season, Code, and Credit Summaries for Judging.

Definitions of the terms used here are maintained in the central glossary.

The rubric is available in two versions. The standard Engineering Notebook Rubric is the official scoring tool used by judges, with detailed criteria and point ranges for each category. The student-friendly version presents the same categories in clear, approachable language so teams can understand expectations and prepare their notebooks. Download a PDF below to get started.

Engineering Notebook Rubric

This is the official rubric that will be used by judges to evaluate Engineering Notebooks at a competition.

Engineering Notebook Rubric – Letter Size

Engineering Notebook Rubric – A4 Size

Student-Friendly Engineering Notebook Rubric

The student-friendly version covers the same criteria in plainer language, using stars in place of points and adding self-check questions for each section. It is written for students to read and use on their own or alongside a coach, and it is a good way for a team to look at its own notebook the way a judge will. 

This version of the rubric is designed to be a teaching tool to help students understand how their notebooks will be evaluated so that they can learn how to document and prepare their Engineering Notebooks effectively. This is not the official rubric and will not be used by judges at events. 

Student-Friendly Engineering Notebook Rubric – Letter Size 

Student-Friendly Engineering Notebook Rubric – A4 Size

What the Notebook is For

An Engineering Notebook is a record of how a team's season actually went: the problem it set out to solve, the ideas it considered, the things it built, the tests it ran, and the changes those tests led to.

It is not a diary of team activity. A notebook that records what happened at each meeting, without recording what the team decided and why, will not score well no matter how neat or complete it looks. What the rubric rewards is engineering reasoning: a problem defined, options weighed, results measured, and changes that follow from evidence.

Note: The standard for whose work the notebook represents comes from the Student-Centered Policy. Read that policy for the full picture of what it means for the work to belong to the students.

How the Rubric is Organized

The rubric has five sections and sixteen criteria.

• Notebook Organization (16 points) — whether a reader can find things, tell who wrote what, see that the record was kept across the season, and see where outside ideas came from.
• Define (12 points) — the problem, the criteria and constraints around it, the team's scoring plan, and the ideas it considered.
• Develop Solutions (16 points) — prototypes, test procedures, recorded results, and how the team explained its decisions.
• Optimize (12 points) — how mechanisms and code are documented, and whether changes trace back to test results.
• Reflection and Iteration (8 points) — whether the team reflected as it went, and whether it moved through the design process more than once.

Version History