Rubrics with letter grades

[anuaneja]

I'm new to Canvas and I'm finding the point-based rubrics very confusing for 'thinking' with letter grades. I have a few related questions whose solutions I've tried to search for but I haven't been able to get clear answers.

i. Are there any rubrics that use letter grades (including + and - grade levels) instead of points in Canvas? 

ii. If not, is there a percentage range rubric that would allow me to 'see' the letter grade the student would earn for the assignment by using a percentage instead? I'm finding this difficult to envision with the 5 point rubric system. For instance, if an assignment was worth 20 points, I know intuitively that an 88% would be a B+ for my course. In the point based rubric, since decimals are not allowed, I'm not sure how this would work for letter grades. If possible, I'd like to start with the letter grade rather than with points that are then converted by Canvas to a letter grade.

iii. If an assignment is weighted 30 points, does the point based rubric need to add up to 30 points? I see the standard rubrics seem to be all based on a 5 point system.  Should I change the total points in the rubric so that I can more intuitively grade for the assignment total?

iv. How does Canvas convert the points to letter grades?

v. If there are no letter grade/percentage rubric options available, how can I most efficiently use a non-scoring rubric (without points) to assign letter grades?

I've seen a lot of responses that all seem to 'encourage' the use of a point based rubric. For submissions evaluated on qualitative basis, the quantitative approach feels counter-intuitive. I'm hoping Canvas has options available for those who primarily rely on qualitative evaluations for which letter grades work best.

[stimme · Accepted solution]

Hi @anuaneja ! Thanks for sharing your questions about using rubrics. I've tried to respond to your various questions. At the end, I'm linking to some relevant guides.

i. Rubrics in Canvas are essentially point-based, as are assignment scores. The points allow Canvas to precisely total scores across assignments. It's not possible to do that with letters.

For a fully letter-based rubric approach, you could use letter grades as achievement level names. If you enable ranges, you'll be able to manually enter a point value to fine tune where the student should fall in the letter range. I set up criterion this way as a test, and it looks alright to me (see attached screen shot).

ii. Rubric criteria don't have an option to convert to percentages.
Decimal values up to two places worked in my testing.
5 points is the default maximum value for a criterion, but you can adjust that so that the weights of your criteria are correctly proportioned.

iii. If you are using a rubric for grading, then the rubric maximum and assignment points possible should match. I believe Canvas will adjust the assignment points possible if you attach a rubric, check the box to use it for grading, and the points don't match initially.
One way to set up a rubric and assignments for grading that feels intuitive might be setting all of your assignments' points possible at 100, organizing them into weighted assignment groups so that the same types of assignments all have the same weight, and then using 100 points as the maximum for all of your rubrics. Different types of assignments might have different numbers of criteria. If 3, perhaps the criteria would be worth 30, 20, and 50 points; if 6, perhaps 10, 20, 20, 15, 15, 20... There is flexibility there to find the right combination.

iv. Canvas can display a student's score on an assignment as a letter, and it can display their course total as a letter. Both of those involve a grading schema. There is a default schema, but you may need to customize it to match your own.

v. It is not necessary to build your rubric using the Canvas Rubrics tool. If the way it structures calculation is too confining, feel free not to use it. An alternative approach would be attaching a rubric to the assignment description (e.g. as a PDF) and making reference to its principles when giving qualitative feedback in SpeedGrader submission comments.

Another possibility is putting all of the information about doing well in the criterion description, not filling out detailed levels of achievement, then always checking the "I'll write free-form comments" checkbox when attaching the rubric. That way you can write a comment, enter a precise criterion score, and not have to translate between schemas mentally.

How do I add a rubric to an assignment? 

How do I add or edit details in an assignment? (Settings Display Grade As Letter is shown here.)

How do I enable a grading scheme for a course? 

How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups? 

[stimme · Accepted solution]

Hi @anuaneja ! Thanks for sharing your questions about using rubrics. I've tried to respond to your various questions. At the end, I'm linking to some relevant guides.

i. Rubrics in Canvas are essentially point-based, as are assignment scores. The points allow Canvas to precisely total scores across assignments. It's not possible to do that with letters.

For a fully letter-based rubric approach, you could use letter grades as achievement level names. If you enable ranges, you'll be able to manually enter a point value to fine tune where the student should fall in the letter range. I set up criterion this way as a test, and it looks alright to me (see attached screen shot).

ii. Rubric criteria don't have an option to convert to percentages.
Decimal values up to two places worked in my testing.
5 points is the default maximum value for a criterion, but you can adjust that so that the weights of your criteria are correctly proportioned.

iii. If you are using a rubric for grading, then the rubric maximum and assignment points possible should match. I believe Canvas will adjust the assignment points possible if you attach a rubric, check the box to use it for grading, and the points don't match initially.
One way to set up a rubric and assignments for grading that feels intuitive might be setting all of your assignments' points possible at 100, organizing them into weighted assignment groups so that the same types of assignments all have the same weight, and then using 100 points as the maximum for all of your rubrics. Different types of assignments might have different numbers of criteria. If 3, perhaps the criteria would be worth 30, 20, and 50 points; if 6, perhaps 10, 20, 20, 15, 15, 20... There is flexibility there to find the right combination.

iv. Canvas can display a student's score on an assignment as a letter, and it can display their course total as a letter. Both of those involve a grading schema. There is a default schema, but you may need to customize it to match your own.

v. It is not necessary to build your rubric using the Canvas Rubrics tool. If the way it structures calculation is too confining, feel free not to use it. An alternative approach would be attaching a rubric to the assignment description (e.g. as a PDF) and making reference to its principles when giving qualitative feedback in SpeedGrader submission comments.

Another possibility is putting all of the information about doing well in the criterion description, not filling out detailed levels of achievement, then always checking the "I'll write free-form comments" checkbox when attaching the rubric. That way you can write a comment, enter a precise criterion score, and not have to translate between schemas mentally.

How do I add a rubric to an assignment? 

How do I add or edit details in an assignment? (Settings Display Grade As Letter is shown here.)

How do I enable a grading scheme for a course? 

How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups? 

[James · Accepted solution]

@stimme has done a great job here. I just want to add a couple of points.

Regarding point iii and equal point values for rubrics and assignments: I routinely used a rubric worth more points than the assignment as a way of offering extra credit. Canvas complains about the points not matching between the rubric and the assignment, but it gives you the option to leave them different (what I want) or to change them to be the same. There are occasionally issues with course copying where assignments revert to the value of the rubric. I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly when that happens, but almost every term I find an assignment worth the rubric point value even though I know it was not that way in the previous term.

I didn't see it in there, but if you are using rubrics for grading, it assigns the maximum point value. That is, if "Excellent" is worth 5 points and "Good" is worth 4, then clicking on Excellent will give the students 5 points. Some people want it to give the midpoint between the levels, but Canvas awards the highest value.

Regarding point values, there is no need to use multiples of 5. Rubrics can be worth any positive value you want. There are hacks to get negative values and hacks using zero-point criterion, but Canvas rubrics are not designed to support those and I would avoid them. I haven't looked recently, but when Rubric Enhancements first came out, some of the flexibility was broken (you could only have integer values). That would completely break every one of my rubrics as I relied on the two decimal places. I used 105%, 90%, 75%, 60%, 45%, and 0% of the total points for my ratings, and those do not come out as whole numbers unless a criteria is worth a multiple of 20. That's hard to do in a 10 point problem and a rubric with six criteria.

[anuaneja]

Thanks a lot, James!  Very useful tips!

[anuaneja]

Thank you so much for this valuable information and all the additional resources!  Points ii. iii. and v. are particularly helpful!  I also like the idea of using letter grades as achievement level names in lieu of a letter grade rubric. Thanks!