[Discussions] Display Discussion Rubrics by Default

[isaac_piercy]

As a K-12, we love that Canvas has built-in rubrics for assignments. We are also thankful that whatever rubric we create is displayed prominently, just beneath the content of the assignment while in student view. This is a great reminder for middle and high school students because it is so easily seen.

For some reason, this is not true of Canvas discussions however. Rather, students must click on the "settings gear" and select "show rubric" to generate a pop up display. This is not ideal, and most of our students forget that rubrics even exist for our online discussions. As an adaptive measure we have begun taking screenshots of our discussion rubrics once they are built and then inserting them at the bottom of the discussion prompt. This is quite time consuming, but we need to do this to keep our student's replies focused and on topic.

I would propose that rubrics for discussions are displayed automatically at the bottom of every discussion prompt, just as they are for general assignments. Or, at the very least, make it a course setting: "display discussion rubrics automatically."

Thanks for considering!

[Steven_S]

In our classes the "cog" was replaced by three dots stacked on top of each other.  It belongs at the right side of the beige bar immediately above "due Sep 7" in your picture.  It shows up for student view in my classes.  It should also show up for you as an instructor, but for you the drop down menu produced has more options.  Students only see "mark all as unread" and "show rubric."  As an instructor you will also see "delete," "speedgrader," "close for comments," and "share to commons" in this menu, and to the immediate left of the three dot icon you will see the buttons for publishing the discussion and editing the prompt.

I turn off many tabs in my  courses (including files, assignments, and quizzes) and use the modules tab instead so that students are prompted to address everything in order.  However, I leave discussions turned in order to enable a general Q&A discussion and introduction forum to be ongoing and easily accessible throughout the semester.  Also, this makes it easy for students to return and reply to each other as we all know we all end up wanting.  Our institution gives instructors individual control of these options in the settings tab under navigation. 

I don't think hiding the discussions tab, would change this detail, but it's worth asking them to let you experiment with that one tab in order to find out.  Also your institution might have changed some other setting, if you are specific about what function you are looking for, your canvas administrator might be able to help you change it back.

[aolsonpacheco]

I've noticed that in Chrome the ability to "show rubric" is not available for student view. However, in FireFox it is. Did you find out anything more about this issue?

[aolsonpacheco]

Do we have a status update on this feature request? I think 250+ votes would get someone's attention, no?

[venitk]

I saw somewhere that it's a bug--if a discussion is one in which students need to post before they can see replies, they can't see the three dots. I haven't tested this, though. 

[cboyle576]

I couldn't agree more. If the students needs to follow a complicated process to get the rubric to display, (1) most of them will skip it and lose out on the opportunity to see this very helpful tool, and (2) others will get confused and frustrated when they can't find it. In the new display there's not even a gear, just the three vertical dots, and that's not at all intuitive to a lot of users. Moreover, I end up answering several emails for each assignment when the students run into difficulty opening the rubric.

[martham_little]

I would love for a discussion rubric to be an option because it helps hold students more accountable for their participation in discussions.  In online courses I have taken, there is a rubric for any comments or contributions I make and students should be held accountable in the same way.  I also think it helps keeps grading more fair for all students as they are not confused about what is required to earn full credit.  I would include talking points in a rubric that helps create guidelines for all students and their topics of discussion.  As mentioned in an above comment, consistency is key to helping students learn and a rubric keeps the grading and expectations consistent within the course.  

[Stef_retired]

 @martham_little ‌, just to clarify, the idea on which you're commenting is to display existing graded discussion rubrics by default. Currently, students can only access the rubric by clicking on a settings gear—but instructors can already use rubrics to grade discussions. For more information, please refer to How do I add a rubric to a graded discussion?  Students currently access them using the process depicted in https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10577-4212540120 

[nwisseman]

Whatever ends up being done for this, can we make it consistent across pages types? I'd love for students to be able to view a rubric in the same way for discussions, assignments, and quizzes. One option: if an assignment/discussion/quiz has a rubric, have a "Show Rubric" button appear in a standard location. This button should be positioned so that it's not covered up by external apps (like Turnitin).

[d00386959]

I hope this request gets some attention.  In the meantime, here is a cool trick you can do to make the discussion rubric visible to students with a single click of a button:

Instructions (text)
1. After adding a rubric, go to the three dot menu of the discussion and hover over the "show rubric" option.
2. Right click and use the inspector.
3. Find the highlighted element (it is an <a> tag) and right click it.
4. Select Copy >> Copy Element.
5. Now, go into the edit mode of the discussion.
6. Enter the HTML editor and locate where you'd like to place this link.
7. Paste the link.
8. OPTIONAL: Edit the link text (it will say "show rubric" and have the little rubric icon by default - the text can be changed to say whatever you want - the rubric icon can be removed if you want by deleting the <i> element within the link)
9. OPTIONAL: You can also style the link into a button if you go back into the HTML editor and add "btn" to the class list of the element.
10. Save the discussion and check it out!

Screen share (video)

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[aolsonpacheco]

This is a great work around for our more advanced users (even though it's pretty simple). I just wish Canvas would fix this issue for all users.