Improved rubric creation and usability

Theme Overview

Rubrics are a powerful tool for helping students understand expectations and better ensure that scoring is accurate, unbiased, and consistent. Improving the creation workflow and usability will save instructors time and enhance student outcomes.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Provide additional editing capabilities that save the instructor time in creating and updating rubrics.
  • Simplify the management and workflow for connecting and disconnecting from artifacts.
  • Improved interface, default settings, and formatting options.
  • Added flexibility in viewing preferences.
  • Export capabilities
Why was this theme chosen to open for voting?

April 2023 • Rubrics are a widely used powerful assessment tool. We’ve heard feedback from our Community and customers directly that by Improving the current experience, we can make our instructors’ and students’ lives easier.

Why was this theme chosen for prioritization?

June 2023Rubrics are a powerful assessment tool and are used by many of our users. The UI/UX improvements to rubrics come up frequently on customer calls, and this was the top-voted theme.

Referenced Ideas (22)

49 Comments
baldwinsh
Community Participant

I second @ScottChristy 's request for rubrics that align more in a grid pattern!! The wobbly grids that are currently generated (particularly when you add a description to the ratings) looks rather unprofessional. It would be nice if we could either add banding to the rubric's criterion rows so that it's easy for both students and instructors/graders to keep track of where they are on rubrics longer than one criterion or to be able to color code the different ratings so that the students see not only a score but can visually see how well they are doing in a given area.

ScottChristy
Community Member

@mbmacdonald  Thanks for the link. It looks to be a solid upgrade.

I just recently decided to start using the rubric feature in Canvas. Up to this point it was easier to just use the rubrics that I had created previously and mark them up on paper for student feedback. Glad to see these features will finally be implemented even if I'm retiring at the end of this school year so it will be too late for me to benefit from the updates....  😐

tslee
Community Participant

When a peer review for an assignment, requires filling in the Canvas rubric, in order to be marked complete,  the UI for the Canvas rubric needs improvement.

There is no easy way to expand the rubric screen as a student, so it is difficult and un-usable.

Angela_J
Community Member

It would be great if the Rubrics page would have an option to allow it to be visible to students. Having learners have one page to view these criteria would be extremely helpful and transparent, particularly with the current design, where locating rubric information differs between assignment and discussion. 

Jonan
Community Explorer

I have discussion boards in every week in my classes, and they all use exactly the same rubric. However, sometimes I need to change the point values, and I need to be able to edit the ONE rubric that is attached to all these discussions.

Seangt
Community Explorer

the new editor is great, it would be better if the updated editor was available where you add rubrics on assignments. 

Also, the UI to find and select a rubric for an assignment is god-awful. I don't know why you have to scroll through your entire list of classes every time to find a rubric. in a tiny window. It's bizarre. it's like nobody that developed this actually used it. 

RaviKoll
Instructure
Instructure

We have a series of upgrades planned for the near future, including:

  • A new rubrics experience in the assignment section to address many of the current user concerns.
  • Enhanced user experience with the SpeedGrader integration.
  • Support for negative and decimal points in ratings.
  • Feature options available at the sub-account level.

Next week, we will be forming a dedicated user group for the Redesigned Rubrics. This will help us collaborate effectively to ensure the new rubric experience aligns with your expectations and that your suggestions are actively evaluated. I will share the link to the user group once it is available.

Thank you all for your active participation and invaluable comments.

TFraser2
Community Member

I haven't seen any themes addressing Fonts in their relation to Quizzes, but I think it's important to be able to set a default Font (and size, etc.) when creating new Quizzes. This could be a global toggle, or something users set (and/or edit) for each new Quiz.

As it stands, the default font has to be changed not only for each question, each answer, and each prompt, but also for stimuli as well. That means that in a relatively short multiple-choice quiz of, say, 30 questions, an instructor would need to highlight and then change more than 120 instances of text. (Or more if there are more than 4 possible answers per question.)

DavidRoueche
Community Member

I don't see any current themes related to this, but I'd love to have the ability to use the same rubric for multiple problems in one assignment. Right now, the only options I see are to create a bloated rubric with duplicate set of criteria for every problem, or separate each problem of an assignment into it's own assignment. I have a generalized homework rubric that I want to use for every problem of every assignment in the course. These other methods are not practical for this. 

These comments are for questions and general discussion. Feedback and detailed discussion will take place after an idea is prioritized.