Is there a way to have the rubric grade scale itself to the assignment grade?

[SanderSieglaff]

Hi all!

I am somewhat new to teaching and to using Canvas from the teaching side, so hopefully there is a feature for this or a workaround or something that I don't know of.

I have been messing with using rubrics for grading, and they're great! However, all the points that you outline in the rubric seem to be strictly attached to the points in the assignment. For example, if you make an assignment that is 80 points, the points you have in your rubric need to add up to 80 points (or else it will ask you to either change the assignment grade or accept that the max points the rubric will give won't line up with the assignment points and may go over/under).

The thing is, I am still figuring out the ratios between all the grades in my courses, and they are far from set in stone. If I realize I need to scale up/down the importance of a few assignments for the overall course grade, I would like to be able to just turn the assignment points up/down a couple decades or so to get a good balance. However, if the grade is based on a rubric, I will need to go through the whole rubric to shift all the assigned points values from the rubric to match the new max score for the assignment. This is very tedious.

What I would like is a way to have all my rubrics be out of 100 points, and then I can apply those rubrics to an assignment of any point value and have the points from the rubric scale up/down to match the assignment. For example, if I have a 100 point rubric, I could apply that rubric to an 80-point assignment and giving a student 100 on the rubric would translate to a grade of 80/80 points (100%). That would also allow me to have one rubric for, say, graded presentations in class, and I could re-use that one rubric for any presentation even if the presentations have different point values.

Does anyone know of any way to do something like this? I can't seem to find a way to do this or anything similar.

Thanks,
Sander

[Ron_Bowman]

@SanderSieglaff -

I do not think there is a way to do what you want.  When we had ANGEL, I know that it would scale the grade when you changed the number of points possible on an assignment(that was a pain when you screwed something up and wanted to change the assignment point total but not what the students had earned.  because you could not change the point total - you had to download the grades, change the assignment total and then reload the grades)

I tried something like that in Canvas and as you have figured out, the rubric grade stays fixed and the assignment total changes which is not what you want.

Good luck
Ron

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @SanderSieglaff ...

I am not sure if anything in this recent blog post will address your question, but I wanted to pass along the information:

Embarking on a Journey of Transformation: Upcoming Rubrics Redesign

[SanderSieglaff]

Hey Chris,

I had not seen this! That sounds like an awesome feature, some of the ideas they made sound similar to what I am interested in, but do you know if there is a reliable way to reach out to them to see if they have more details?

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@SanderSieglaff 

I believe that is all the information available; however, you could post in the comment section about what you want more information on and you may get a response.

Ron

[SanderSieglaff]

Yeah, I see some of the posts there mention feature requests and the like, I'll make a reply to that post and hopefully we'll see a feature like that come the end of the year! Thanks everyone for your help!

Sander

[JOHNOMWEG]

It's surprising that Canvas still lacks the ability to scale the value of an assignment independently from the score a student receives on it. This limitation assumes a one-size-fits-all approach to grading, where all points across all assignments carry equal weight—something that doesn’t reflect the diverse and nuanced grading practices many educators use. Our previous platform, Schoolloop, supported this basic but essential functionality. I hope Canvas will consider implementing a more flexible and realistic grading system to better support teachers' varied assessment strategies.

[JOHNOMWEG]

Similar requests have been dismissed (archived) multiple times (since 2017!) but this feature is not offered on the platform. What is going on?

[SanderSieglaff]

Yeah, to be clear I have not yet seen the feature I was originally asking about get implemented 😞 the details provided above let me put it to the back of my mind thinking "Oh, that feature will come later! I'll just wait!"

And then a year passed.

I have toyed with the idea of investigating the Canvas API as a way around the monoteny of creating essentially the exact same rubric for several assignments but scaled differently, but I have not begun looking into that at all as school is busy (somthing I think we can all agree on).

[SanderSieglaff]

I think there is a way to scale assignment weight using assignment groups, but I am not super familiar with how it works. Hypotheically you could make different assignment groups, assign your various assignments into those groups (the default groups are like "assignments", "quizzes", "imported assignments", etc), and then play with the weights of those groups.
Again, I don't really know how it works.

[JOHNOMWEG]

Thanks Sander. I know how to do it BETWEEN assignment groups. I want to be able to scale the value of individual assignments WITHIN the same group!

[SanderSieglaff]

Gotcha, yeah, I think the only way would be to change the point values of assignments individually! I think you can change that at the bottom of an assignment, and then you would just need to do your own math to keep track of what the proportion of points is for that assignment group! I don't know if there is a way to do it automatically though.

[JOHNOMWEG]

There is no automatic functionality. Canvas, I think, should do the math for teachers so we can focus on teaching rather than creating workarounds for shortcomings in the platform. It seems like such an elementary tool but it is frustrating that it has not been implemented despite over 7 years of requests for it.

[JOHNOMWEG]

Still waiting for a reply. I see there was a proposal in Canvas ideas that has been around since 2017 and is currently "open". Come on Canvas, let's go!

[JOHNOMWEG]

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas/Gradebook-Settings-Scaling-Assignment-Scores/idi-p/3...