What are performance indicators? What is the difference between a rubric and a performance indicator?

Performance indicators are behaviour or cognitive skills mastered that are a subset of the goal of mastering a larger task. For instance in the task of writing a paper, performance indicators might be..

demonstrating how to write a thesis statement.
demonstrating how to organize by outline.
demonstrate how to make library reference cards
demonstrate how to use APA format in cites.
demonstrate how to write a biblography.

and so on.