Can I group criteria in a rubric into categories?

[cwhittle]

I want to separate the criteria for a particularly involved project into categories (being able to do some sub-categories would be even better), as in the table below.  Is this possible in Canvas rubrics?  (I suppose I could use a criterion as a category label and make it worth 0 points, but I'm not sure the students would understand what I was doing.)

Thanks!

[kona · Accepted solution]

 @cwhittle ​, unfortunately there isn't a way to add headings/categories to rubrics in Canvas. You are correct that you could create a heading by making it worth zero points but that could definitely get confusing to students. In general rubrics in Canvas are pretty simplistic in design and functionality, which can be great or frustrating, depending on what you're trying to do! My only other suggestion is to create multiple rubrics - possibly one for each category - and also include a different assignment for each rubric. Ex: Word Outline rubric and a word outline assignment, Access Database rubric and Access Database assignment.

Hope this helps!

[cwhittle]

Thank you!

[dlyle]

That'd be more helpful if we could attach multiple rubrics to one assignment but we can't.

Creating multiple assignments just creates more work/confusion for students, and more work for markers because you will typically be marking both parts side by side, not independently, so matching submissions is going to be a pain.

So I don't particularly like this workaround. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @cwhittle ​...

To piggy-back on what  @kona ​ has correctly stated...  I'm working on a course right now where I'm moving our rubrics (eventually built in a Macromedia Dreamweaver template) to Canvas rubrics.  I'm running into the same issue with headings in the rubric.  Here's just part of one example...which is similar to what Kona has suggested.

You can see the core abilities of "Act Responsibly", "Work Productively", "Think Critically and Creatively", and "Communicate Clearly" all have zero points.  It's a bit strange having zeros in two columns, but that's the only way I've figured out how to do this.  I wish there was a way to just have a simple line of text without point values, but this will suffice for now.

Hope this helps!

[cwhittle]

Thank you!

[dlyle]

Ugly, and at first confusing for students, but better than nothing.

I find it very limiting to not even be able to put *line breaks* in the descriptors, or simple lists. 

[skhagen]

If you're not already using Outcomes, you could punctuate your categories with Outcomes that don't count as part of the grade. They fit into a rubric but stand out a bit visually.  

[WayneXYZ]

Chiming in with a workaround that I use. It's not an optimal solution to the problem, but I find that it is a tremendous help when navigating complex grading rubrics.

Canvas doesn't allow HTML in the rubric description, but it's possible to use an online bold text generator to turn certain words into a "header". My rubric is organized into sections like "Introduction", "Literature review", "Language and style" etc. In lieu of an option to use headers or categories in Canvas, I simply turn these phrases into bold text and copy-paste them in the rubric description, before the actual description text.

It ends up looking like this, and it does help quite a bit: