How Do I Make Criteria Roll Up To Outcomes in a Rubric? (Standards Based Grading)

[paxton_helms]

When I create a Rubric, it has two elements:

- Outcomes

- Criteria

I have not found a way to make a single Criteria or multiple Criteria roll up into an Outcome score.  This 1) doubles my grading effort 2) introduces the risk that I don't accurately convert criteria into an Outcome 3) creates confusion for students.

Has anyone (@BenFriedman) found a solution for this?

Paxton

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @paxton_helms ...

I'm not sure if I totally understand your question.  I'm not sure what you mean by "roll up to outcomes".  When you are creating a rubric for your course, the "Find Outcome" link at the bottom of the rubric allows you to pick outcomes in your course that you've previously built via your "Outcomes" course navigation button.  So, once you add outcomes in your "Outcomes" course navigation button, you can pick those outcomes to add to your rubrics.

Does this help at all?

[paxton_helms]

No, not really, honestly.

The issue is this.  Let's say I have an assignment and I am grading that student on five criteria in my rubric:

- Creativity (3 points)

- Mechanics (3 points)

- Concept (3 points)

- Editing (3 points)

- Overall Excellence (3 points)

That's a maximum of 15 points.  What I would REALLY like Canvas to do is to take the student's score and automatically use that score to determine the student's performance on an Outcome that I have connected to those rubric elements.  So, if a student gets a 14/15 on the various elements of an assignment Canvas does the math for me and automatically generates an Outcome result.  In other words, I want my rubric elements to be tied to my Outcomes.

And, honestly, forget five rubric elements.  It would be great if Canvas could connect even ONE rubric element to one Outcome.  Right now, I have to manually convert rubric scores to Outcome scores.  That is nuts.

Does that make sense?

[paxton_helms]

@Chris_Hofer, here is a picture of a Rubric.  You'll see that I have Criterion 1 and Criterion 2 and then an Outcome.  What I want to have happen is that the scores I assign on Criterion 1 and Criterion 2 automatically determine the score on the Outcome.  AND, even better, I would like to be able to do that with multiple Criteria and multiple Outcomes in the same assignment.  So, the Criteria scores "roll up" and determine the Outcome score. 

Now, I know from experience that Canvas tends to implement this kind of change request as narrowly as possible so let me be clear: I should be able to have UNLIMITED criteria rolling to up to UNLIMITED Outcomes.  Please do not "pull a Canvas" and implement this so narrowly as to defeat the purpose of having it or implement some arbitrary limitation (like not showing question details on Quizzes of more than 25 questions and not allowing Quizzes to be duplicated more than once), an approach I have seen Canvas take in countless other areas and which leaves customers very angry, utterly defeated, or both.

  

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi @paxton_helms ...

Thank you for the additional screenshot and explanation.  Although I do not work for Instructure (I work at a Technical College in Wisconsin), what you describe with criteria in a rubric wanting to "roll up" into an Outcome row is not possible...at least not possible from my experience.  Each criteria row uses either the defined ratings that you've specified in the cells for that row...or you could even type in another score when grading student work via the SpeedGrader.  Each of your Outcomes rows essentially operates the same way.  There is no "connection" within the rubric to tell it to add up the rubric row total points and put that total in the Outcome row.  So, if you gave your student 10 points (5 points for each criterion), it's not going to display that total in the Outcome row that you've added.

If you wanted, you could certainly consider submitting a Feature Idea here in the Community to see if other people would like to see something similar implemented in Canvas:

• How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community?
• What is the feature development process for Instructure products?
• How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community?

Sorry that I don't have better news for you, but I hope this has helped in some way to answer your additional question(s).  Take care...

[paxton_helms]

Yes, that is pretty much what I had figured out.  But I appreciate the confirmation!

It's a pretty big problem for me b/c it gets right at the tension between providing detailed feedback while still having only a general grade linked to an outcome.  Not having detailed feedback linked to an outcome is a deal-breaker functionality gap for many teachers trying to do SBG on Canvas.  Gaps like this are why I don't think SBG is compatible with Canvas.

I appreciate your comments and wish you good luck in using Canvas!

[0148723]

Add this to the list of ways we'd like to "break Canvas Gradebook" so that it provides more opportunities for Equitable Grading Practices. I am hopeful that they have a team working on DEI improvements. I am in the state of CA and the 116 community colleges, almost all Hispanic Serving Institutions, just signed on for another 4 years while simultaneously sponsoring the education of faculty on equitable grading practices that align with culturally responsive pedagogy. There is a disconnect between those practices and the grade book. Also, I just made the "meets outcome" 1 point and removed 1 point from one of the other criterion. That is my workaround.