[ARCHIVED] Why is there a useless popup menu when creating Rubric Criteria?

[bernardo]

Each time I create a rubric, when I add a criterion to the rubric, a stupid popup menu asks me if I want a new criterion or if I want to duplicate the last one. This didn't used to happen in previous versions of canvas so apparently someone thinks this is a feature? I can't even imagine why I would use this, but even if I would on some rare occasion, what's the point of having the menu popup every time I add a criterion? It requires unnecessary mouseclicks (not to mention stress lol) to choose new criterion each time, and of course the useless menu gets longer and more intrusive with each new criterion. Is there any way to disable this annoying "feature"?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi bernardo...

I'm not sure if you've had an opportunity to navigate around the Community site much, but there's a bunch of cool "work-arounds" here, and I think one in particular will be of interest to you...which will make your life easier when it comes to building rubrics.  I know that it has saved me hours and hours of time myself.  I'm not sure if you've ever heard of "Canvancements" (Canvas Enhancements), but these are series of user scripts that one of our fellow Community members,  @James ‌, has developed to help people here in the Community.  The one that I invite you to look at is called Importing Rubrics from a Spreadsheet.  It's a lot of information, but James does an excellent job of telling you what his "Canvancement" does, and he even has short video tutorials of how it works and how to set it up for your own use.  I'd highly recommend that you go through his document and try using his rubric importer.  Like I said, it has literally saved me hours and hours of work...and I almost never have to go through the steps that you have described.  (By the way, I'm an administrator for our school's Canvas environment, and I build a lot of course content for our faculty...including the rubrics for assignments.)

I hope this information will be of help to you, Bernardo.  Please let Community members know if you have any questions...or you can post your specific questions about James' "Canvancement" directly to his document.  Thanks!

[James]

bernardo 

I feel your pain. I've written a lot of code to reduce the number of clicks required to do something in Canvas.

The menu isn't useless if someone wants to duplicate questions. It is useless for those who have unique ratings for all questions. Providing functionality for some (the ability to duplicate) has made it harder for others.

The decision to duplicate or create is, by necessity, at the criterion level. Let's say that I had four "exceeds, meets, approaches" in a row and then I needed something else -- I would use duplicate 3 times and then new once. Then I want to go with another set of "exceeds, meets, approaches" so I'm back to duplication. There is no good way to set the duplicate option at the beginning although saying "there are no duplicate criteria in this rubric" might be an option. It probably won't happen since Canvas wants to keep the interface clean and simple without lots of extra bells and whistles and options.

You could write a userscript that would use a Mutation Observer to watch for the menu to pop up and automatically select the box to create a new one, but there's no option built into Canvas to disable that question.

[bernardo]

I don't understand - wouldn't it be "exceed, meet, approach" something? And wouldn't that something have to be different every time? I guess I don't understand why you would want two copies of the exact same criteria in a rubric, but I'm probably missing something. 

[James]

I think we use rubrics in different ways. It is sometimes hard for people to imagine things they have not experienced directly.

I stick to a short title and don't put additional details in there, so no, all of my criteria are exactly the same.

When I started with rubrics, there was only a title and not a description (or there was only a description and not a title). When Canvas renamed the description to be title and then added a long description, they inconsistently displayed it. Students would see it in some places and not in others, so I didn't use it.

It's still this way because of the way rubrics display in SpeedGrader. The minimum width is so non-friendly that I cannot see the items in the rubric unless I make the rubric so wide that I cannot see much of the document.

For example, this is how much I see when I open SpeedGrader.

My criteria are Awesome, Good, Okay, Fair, Poor, and None. As you [don't] see, it is missing fair, poor, and none. 

I have applied a CSS tweak that doesn't make the ratings take up so much space. Here's what it looks like when my script is running. It's better, but I still don't see none or the point values, but at least I don't have to drag the pane too much wider to get them.

My wife uses a discussion rubric where the school decided to put the full details into the rubric in Canvas. Mine is on a separate document that I also print and give to my students. I want them to refer to that document that has more instructions about how to complete the (in this case) discussion.

Anyway, my wife's rubric is so long with all of the details that she cannot complete it without scrolling. If it showed just the titles, then it would be quicker for her to grade. Maybe I should write a tweak for her that hides the descriptions in SpeedGrader -- she knows what they are because she uses the rubric enough, she really just needs the titles.

Even if you use rubrics that use the same titles, it may be quicker to duplicate and change than to retype from scratch. Even if you have rubrics that have completely different titles and descriptions, but they all have the same number of ratings and the same point values, it may be quicker to start with a duplicated criteria.