Overview

Rubrics allow you to grade assessments quickly and consistently. Before you start using rubrics for grading assessments, administrators have to make sure that the Rubrics feature is installed in the App Center.

To see the rubrics in your libraries, visit Resources/Catalog from the left bar.

To add a rubric to a library, click Add, then select 'Rubric'. 

Enter its name, description, the library where you want to put it, then click Save.

Ratings and criteria

By default, a rubric is given two criteria (Criterion 1 => 50 points, Criterion 2 => 50 points) and four ratings in the Grading scale section (Poor => 20 Pts, Fair => 30 Pts, Good => 40 Pts, Excellent => 50 Pts). This is clearly a starting point, and it's assumed that you will edit these values.

To edit the default values click the Edit button.

Then change the name, the description, and points of the criterion.

If you change the maximum points of the criterion the points of the ratings in the grading scale are also updated. Note that you can enter a decimal into a rubric criteria points override area.

You can edit the number of points for each rating on the grading scale. In the Pts column, it is indicated the maximum points users can achieve in case of a criterion. By default, rubric cells are ordered from low points to high points.

To delete a rating from the grading scale of a criterion, click the delete icon of the rating.

To add a new rating to the grading scale hover over the "+" icon.

Then click the icon if you want to add the new rating to the left of the current cell or the icon if you want to add it to the right.

To use one of the grading scales from the library for a specific criterion, click its icon.

Then click "Grading scale" from the pop-up.

Select the grading scale from the library then click submit.

The grading scale of the criterion will be updated with the new values.

To use one of the grading scales from the library for all of the criteria from of the rubric, click the "Grading scale" button.

Select the grading scale from the library then click submit.

The grading scales will be updated with the new values.

To add another criterion, click 'Add criterion'.

Then enter the name, the description, and points of the criterion.

You can give a title and a description for each rating of the criterion.

You can rearrange the rows of the table using drag-and-drop.

To delete a criterion click the icon then select Delete from the pop-up.

After you finish editing the rubric click Save.

Using rubrics

To use a rubric when grading an assessment, go to the assessment, then visit the 'Use rubric' tab. Here you have the option of adding a new rubric or choose an existing one from your library.  If you click on New you can build your rubric following the guidelines previously detailed in the section 'Ratings and criteria'. 

 If you click on Library, select a rubric from the list, then click Save. 

After the rubric is added to the assessment you can change its criteria and points by clicking the Edit button.

Adding competencies to rubrics

You can add competencies as rubric criteria or you can associate an existing criterion with a competency, and when you score that criterion, the percentage is counted as another data point for the associated competency.

To add a competency as a criterion, click Add competencies.

Note that, if you add competencies to an assessment via its Set Competencies tab, then you add competencies to the rubric, the original competencies are cleared and the rubric competencies are used instead.

Select the competency from the list, then click Submit. In case you add competencies as new criteria, then you can select multiple competencies. In this case, a separate criterion will be created for each competency.

After the competency is added as a criterion, you can edit its name, description, and grading scale.

To associate an existing criterion with a competency, click its icon.

Then click on "Add competency" from the drop-down.

Select the competency and click Submit. In case you want to associate a competency with an existing criterion, then you can select only one competency.

A criterion associated with a competency is marked with a green tag, and if you hover over the tag, the full name of the competency is displayed.

You can remove a competency from a criterion by clicking on its icon and selecting "Remove competency".

Note that in order to add a competency to a criterion, the course has to be associated with a set of competencies. If you copy a rubric to a library, the copy does not include the competency tags.

Points ordering

By default, rubric cells are ordered from low points to high points.

Portal administrators can swap this on a site-wide level via Admin/Grading scales/Options.

Instructors and admins can override the site's default rubric points ordering on a per-course basis. To do this, visit the class Admin/Configure/Assessments page then go to the "Rubric ordering" area and select the preferred ordering option.

Flag criteria as not counting towards assessment

You can flag one or more criteria as not counting towards assessment. This can be useful if you'd like some criteria to be used simply for feedback, or if you'd like some criteria that are used to measure competencies to be ignored for the purposes of assessment grading. To flag, criteria click the icon and select the "Don't count towards assessment" option.

If a criterion doesn't count towards assessment, the points are displayed as a grayed-out zero and a small gray triangle is displayed.

Learners can see the criteria that don't count below the ones that do, with an explanatory note.

Grading assessments using rubrics

When grading an assessment using a rubric, select the cells that best reflect the learner's answer, then click Save.

When grading an assessment, criteria that don't count towards the assessment score are indicated with a gray triangle.