Need some suggestions on creating a helpful rubric!

[campbellj]

FYI - I'm using Canvas in a middle school classroom.

I have a weekly journal assignment that my students complete every day. Currently, I create one assignment for the entire week. On Monday, they submit the assignment normally. On Tuesday-Friday, they submit their next response as a comment. To grade this assignment, I have created a rubric with Monday-Friday each as their own criterion. However, any time we don't have school, I can't just negate one of the columns from that rubric.

So - I added two zero-point ratings to each day's grade. One says Incomplete, and one says No School Today. Both are worth 0 points. But when I go to grade a students' assignment, selecting one rating automatically highlights both of them.

Parents have been asking me to simplify my scoring of these daily journals so that they can understand what their children are losing points for. I'm desperately trying to tweak rubrics to meet their requests, but am having a hard time designing a rubric that will work. Any suggestions you might have are greatly appreciated. Should I be using a different type of assignment altogether? I've never used Discussions before - might that be a better avenue?

[stephanie_pope]

Boy, that does sound like a lot of work. I would suggest 2 things:

1) Try a discussion: I would title the discussion by week and have each student post titling it Monday, Tuesday, etc. This could also help organize all the posts.

2) For the rubric: try using the criteria by day i.e. Initial Post, Tuesday Post, Wednesday Post, etc. Sadly, if you grade mid-week it will ding their grade if you give them a zero because they haven't completed the update days journal.

I think I'm confused about the selecting two part...could you include a picture? I'll see if I can post a picture of a rubric in discussions- it's my favorite way to grade discussions.

Stephanie

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

 @campbellj , it looks like you've created this question in both the Instructional Designers and K-12 groups. To avoid duplication of effort, and to keep Community resources organized and readily accessible, I've locked this discussion, and will direct all participants to the K-12 discussion, which already has a Correct Answer marked: Need some tips on creating a helpful rubric!

For future reference, did you know that you can share a post in more than one community space? Rather than having to create two copies with differing comment threads, you can create your post and then use the Share link in the upper right to share it into additional spaces. Because you are a member of the Instructional Designers group, for example, you should be able to ask questions in the Start a Discussion/Question... areaof that group and then share it into the K-12 group, or vice versa.