Rubrics

Rubrics are used to evaluate an activity or item based on a predefined set of criteria. They help ensure that activities and items are evaluated fairly and consistently.

Rubrics Basics

Table of contents

1. Understanding Rubrics
2. Accessing Rubrics
3. Creating Rubrics
4. Creating Holistic Rubrics
5. Creating Analytic Rubrics
6. Creating a Weighted Analytic Rubric
7. Editing Rubrics
8. Managing Rubric Status Settings
9. Copying Rubrics
10. Deleting Rubrics
11. Viewing Rubric Statistics

Understanding Rubrics

You can create rubrics at the organization, department or course level. Rubrics are not automatically shared with all child org units below the org unit in which they were created in your organization's hierarchy. You must explicitly share them if you want them available to child org units. Rubrics created at the course level cannot be shared with other courses (you can create a rubric in a course template and reuse it in course offerings for that course template). If you don't want to share a rubric with all child org units, you can restrict who it is shared with on the New Rubric or Edit Rubric page.

If you are using Competencies to evaluate users, we recommend you set up rubrics before you set up your competencies, learning objectives, and activities since you cannot create an activity without associating it with a rubric and you cannot assess whether a user has completed a competency or learning objective without assessing the associated activities using the rubric.

There are two types of rubrics:

• Holistic Rubrics Single criterion rubrics (one-dimensional) used to assess participants' overall achievement on an activity or item based on predefined achievement levels. Holistic rubrics may use a percentage or text only scoring method.
• Analytic Rubrics Two-dimensional rubrics with levels of achievement as columns and assessment criteria as rows. Allows you to assess participants' achievements based on multiple criteria using a single rubric. You can assign different weights (value) to different criteria and include an overall achievement by totaling the criteria. With analytic rubrics, levels of achievement display in columns and your assessment criteria display in rows. Analytic rubrics may use a points, custom points, or text only scoring method. Points and custom points analytic rubrics may use both text and points to assess performance; with custom points, each criterion may be worth a different number of points. For both points and custom points, an Overall Score is provided based on the total number of points achieved. The Overall Score determines if learners meet the criteria determined by instructors. You can manually override the Total and the Overall Score of the rubric.

Use scenarios

• Your school district has a standard rubric for evaluating students' performance. The rubric assesses performance based on four criteria: Knowledge and Understanding; Critical Thinking; Communication; and Application of Knowledge. Students may achieve one of four levels for each criteria: Needs Remediation; Below Expectations; Meets Expectations; and Exceeds Expectations. The rubric clearly describes the characteristics of each level for each criterion.

Back to top

Accessing Rubrics

Do one of the following:

• Click Rubrics on the navbar (if Rubrics is on your navigation bar)
• Click Rubrics under the Course Admin

Back to top

Creating Rubrics

Creating holistic and analytic rubrics

Creating a holistic rubric

Holistic rubrics can be used to evaluate learners based on a single criterion.

1. Follow steps 1 through 4 on the "Creating rubrics" section above, selecting Holistic as the rubric type.
2. Select a Scoring Method:
   • No Score
   • Percentage
3. Add new levels using the plus (+) icons  - Add new level before or add new level after - at any time.  To remove a level, click the trash can icon on the level.
4. Edit level titles.
5. Update the level percentages and add details to inform learners how to achieve each level of the rubric.  When adding rubric details you will be able to include basic HTML markup, such as bold, italics, and unordered lists.
6. Return to step 8 in the "Creating rubrics" to complete your rubric creation.

Back to top

Creating an analytic rubric

1. Follow steps 1 through 4 on the "Creating rubrics" section above, selecting Analytic as the rubric type.
2. Select a Scoring Method:
   • No Score
   • Points
   • Custom Points (NOTE: custom points can be used to create weighted rubrics, found in the section below)
3. Add new levels using the plus (+) icons  - Add new level before or add new level after - at any time.  To remove a level, click the trash can icon on the level.
4. Click Add Criterion to create additional criterion.  Criteria can be rearranged by using the handles on the left to drag and drop into the new location.  Remove the criterion you are no longer using by clicking the trash can icon to the right of the criterion row.
5. Edit level and criterion titles.
6. Update the level percentages and add details to inform learners how to achieve each level of the rubric.  When adding rubric details you will be able to include basic HTML markup, such as bold, italics, and unordered lists.
7. Add initial feedback, if desired.
8. Navigate to overall score and add details into the overall score table.
9. Return to step 8 in the "Creating rubrics" to complete your rubric creation.

Back to top

Creating a weighted analytic rubric

Evaluate learners based on multiple criteria by creating and using an analytic rubric.

1. Follow steps 1 through 4 on the "Creating rubrics" section above, selecting Analytic as the rubric type.
2. Select the Scoring Method of Custom Points.
3. Add/delete levels and criterion as described in the "Creating an analytic rubric" section above.
4. Customize levels and criterion by clicking it.  NOTE weighted rubrics should be aligned to the total score of the assignment or weighted out of 100.
5. Assign total values to each criterion.
6. Customize the points for each level.
7. Add initial feedback, if desired.
8. The overall score is assigned to students based on their level of achievement. To update the overall score levels, click it.
9. Return to step 8 in the "Creating rubrics" to complete your rubric creation.

Back to top

Editing rubrics

You can only edit a rubric from the org unit in which it was created and you cannot edit a rubric that is being used by a Competencies activity.

Edit rubric properties

1. On the Rubrics page, click on the rubric you want to edit.
2. Make your changes.
3. Click Close.

Back to top

Managing rubric status settings

1. On the Rubrics page, navigate to the rubric
2. Select a Rubric Status from the drop-down list.
3. Click Save.

Note You cannot associate Competencies activities with draft or archived rubrics. Existing associations with archived rubrics are maintained.

Back to top

Copying rubrics

Copying a rubric creates a new rubric based on an existing rubric in the same org unit. The new rubric has the same properties, levels and criteria, and is shared with the same org units as the original rubric.

On the Rubrics page, click Copy from the context menu of the rubric you want to copy.

Back to top

Deleting rubrics

You can only delete a rubric from the org unit in which it was created and you cannot delete a rubric that is being used by a Competencies activity.

On the Rubrics page, Delete from the context menu of the rubric you want to delete.

Back to top

Viewing rubric statistics

Rubric statistics are recorded for each rubric association.

Rubric statistics for Competencies activities show the number of assessments completed, average level achieved, the percentage of users who chose each level (by criterion for analytic rubrics), and individual statistics for each user who was evaluated.

View rubric statistics for a rubric association

1. On the Rubrics page, click View Statistics from the context menu of the rubric you want to view.
2. You can view statistics in the Competency Activities tab.