Add Multiple Rubrics to One Assignment

[anthonem]

At our college, faculty would like the ability to attach more than one rubric to an assignment. This is especially the case when importing account level outcomes / rubrics.

Originally posted by Tony Anderson on the old community: Add Multiple Rubrics to One Assignment : Help Center 

Ideally, it would be great if there was an option to make the second rubric hidden from students. This feature would be quite valuable for us institutionally, when incrementally assessing learning outcomes in our GenEd program over a four-year period.

Sam McCool articulated this nicely on the old community board:

This feature would then enable an instructor to award a grade for an assignment based on a course level rubric aligned with the course outcomes as well as record an evaluation of the performance based on a program outcomes rubric. 

[kona]

What we would like to use two rubrics for is a normal "grading" rubric (set-up the way the instructor would like to grade) and then a separate outcomes rubric (set-up based on Institutional outcomes and that didn't count toward the student's grade, but that could be used to collect outcome data). Yet, I know of cases where an Instructor would like to use both rubrics for "grading" and has them separate because they are assessing different criteria.

So, my vote is not only for the ability to use multiple rubrics, but also the ability to decide if each rubric gets used for "grading" or not.

[anthonem]

I'd like to echo Kona's comment. She nicely articulated the intent of my original request!

[tdw]

Hey Deactivated user​ often schools will have integrated standards that cross multiple curricula and a teacher is still responsible for evaluating students against those outcomes.  For example a history teacher might have a set of history standards but still need to evaluate student responses against writing standards and technology use against the ISTE standards.  Multiple rubrics on an assignment would easily allow them to do that.

[buellj]

That's pretty much what we want. We are keeping our fingers crossed in hopes that this gets implemented.

[awilliams]

Yep I agree with  @kona ​ 100%. If a rubric is not used for grading, there should be an additional checkbox for "Show rubric results to student." So if the rubric is used for grading, results must be shown to students. If the rubric is not used for grading, there is an option to hide results from students. Along with the ability to attach multiple rubrics to a single assignment, this would greatly simplify our institution's pursuit of collecting Student Learning Outcome mastery without impacting the current experience for faculty and students on assignment grading and communication.

[mcsmith]

Could this be accomplished by having a single rubric with the option to apply for grading or show students at the criteria level?  @tdw ​  @kona ​  @anthonem ​  @buellj ​

[tdw]

Deactivated user​: It could but I think in my given scenario the issue is efficiency.  For example, every time a student writes a paper for a History class the teacher is going to use the same half-dozen or so writing outcomes with a variety of new/different History outcomes.  With one rubric the teacher is forced to go and select the desired outcomes from the writing outcome group.  Ideally this could be a separate rubric that could added with a single click.

Similarly, every Discussion is probably going to use the same 7 or 8 ISTE outcomes (digital citizenship, technology use, etc...) regardless of the topic of discussion pertaining to History.  The teacher is forced to select those specific outcomes in addition to the history ones.

In my teaching experience the result is that teachers won't do it because it's too much hassle.  So your writing standards only end up being evaluated in English class and your ISTE standards in Tech class- when ideally they should be evaluated in nearly every class BUT those because they're supposed to be integrated cross-curricula.

An alternative would be to allow to import an existing rubric into a new rubric instead of adding a second.  So every time the teacher creates a new paper they first "import" their writing rubric (which just copies the attached outcomes to the new rubric) and then add their desired History outcomes.

The result is essentially the same- an easy way to attach all the outcomes from different outcome groups.  Then you can do whatever other magic you want, including in grading, displaying to students, etc... etc...

Hope that makes sense!

[hunter]

Kona's reasoning is why I too would vote for multiple rubrics on single assignments. Teachers measure different criteria for grading as compared to administration for meeting outcomes.

[kona]

Deactivated user​, *maybe* but I don't think it would be as effective/efficient for faculty. Faculty want to (in as few steps as possible) click a button and add their rubrics - especially ones they need to use for every assignment (ex: a College outcome based rubric). They probably wouldn't want to add the extra rows to their normal "grading rubric" for an assignment. If they use different grading rubrics for different assignments then this means going through the trouble of adding these extra criteria each time. In addition, I could see faculty getting confused - which row is which? - and doing this could potentially create a HUGE rubric which is difficult to use/grade in speedgrader.

So, I guess my answer is I'd really rather have two rubrics - just seems to make things more simple and cleaner - than one rubric with the option to pick which rows (criteria) were included in the grade. Yet, if you said we can have the one rubric option in a month or the two rubric option in a year, I might be persuaded. Or, at least willing to go with the one rubric option for now and hope that the two rubric option would come about sooner rather than later.

[James]

 @kona ​, I almost replied for you with a "No" but I figured I should read the whole discussion first. I still haven't done that, so I apologize if I'm saying something that has already been discussed to death.

The way it was worded was confusing. Is it going to be an "exclusive or" -- one or the other but not both? In that case, it would preclude sharing results with a student if it wasn't graded and that is bad practice. Generally, students should have access to feedback -- but I'll grant that there might be a need to make notes you didn't want the student to see (like the notes column in the gradebook).

If it was going to be the regular "or" -- one or the other or both -- then it might work, but it really sounded like you needed one rubric, some items were graded and some items were purely information and didn't contain a number. The whole two-rubric thing sounds like overkill - I know I don't want to go through and grade something twice.

[kona]

 @James ​, what I'm wanting (can't speak for everyone) is one rubric for grading (ex: the Instructors normal grading rubric) and one rubric for outcomes (what the College wants to know). Often what the College wants assessed is not necessarily what the Instructor wants to assignment grades based on. What I'd like is if you could have two rubrics and the option to decide if one or both count towards the grade.

[James]

So, why not one rubric for both, with each row individually being marked as graded/not and visible/not? And while you're at it, throw in the ability to use a row in a rubric for both grading and outcomes measurement. Why should you have to mark it twice?

[kona]

It's hard to grade HUGE rubrics, so personally I'd vote for outcome stuff not having their own row (visible or not to the student, count as points or not for the final grade). If we could somehow link an outcome to a rubric criteria without needing to use the point value set-up by the College, then that would work (Angel did something like that). Yet, many Institutions are looking to collect specific number data for their outcomes and to do that consistently across the board everyone needs to use the same rubric with the same point values.

In addition, and in all fairness, I think other people had other ideas for why they wanted two rubrics for one assignment. I'm only commenting on the one that matters to me (my College/Faculty).

[anthonem]

Deactivated user  I'll echo Danny and Kona's responses -- it would be much better two have to separate rubrics. Not only in terms of ease of use for instructors, but also for the logistics of institutional outcomes reporting.

It looks like Kona and James have had a productive discussion about the merits of what you're proposing versus two separate rubrics. I'll echo Kona's input -- consistency for the rating scale of institutional outcomes reporting is REALLY important. In many instances, it doesn't work to combine the instructor's assessment of student work and institutional outcomes into one row in a rubric because the institutional outcome point scale could be very different from the assignment point scale.

[kmeeusen]

And I will echo Mark's, Danny's and Kona's thought on this.

I wear our Outcomes hat at my college, and would want these as separate rubrics to better manage outcome reporting. I also agree that combined would be a huge challenge for the instructor. It is part of why I am not a fan of how outcomes currently work in Canvas.

[mcsmith]

It totally makes sense. I hear you when you say teachers wont use it if it is a hassle. There are a lot of creative ways we can eliminate the hassle. This discussion is helping me understand the real problem which will guide us to coming up with the right solution. So glad you all are participating!

[mcsmith]

We understand the need for efficiency. It's interesting you bring up SpeedGrader. Thoughts of the SPeedGrader was one of the main reasons I brought up the idea of using specific criterion rows as opposed to two separate rubrics. I appreciate this conversation so much. it is incredible what our amazing UX team can come with to deliver efficiency for our users. Main goal here is to clearly understand the problem, not to necessarily come up with the solution.

[mcsmith]

Could you elaborate on what you mean by linking an outcome rubric row to an outcome? Is your institution just looking for alignment and not necessarily the assessment of the college outcomes?

[kona]

Our previous LMS (Angel) gave us the ability to link an outcome to any rubric criterion. It was actually pretty nice because you could then map the specific aspects of an assignment that were meeting a specific outcome. Yet, one limitation was the lack of consistency in terms of which outcomes were used for the Assignment and the number value assigned. Because of this we would probably prefer the separate uniform rubric for outcomes.

[Chris_Hofer]

Deactivated user​...

At the Technical College where I work (only been with Canvas for about 1 1/2 years), we have looked at using Outcomes in rubrics, but we aren't utilizing Outcomes very much yet.  I can tell you (as I had stated in my June 9th reply) that some of our courses do have multiple rubrics (more than two) per assignment...mainly because there are multiple parts to the assignment, and the rubrics are different...but tied to the same assignment.  Yes, I suppose you could separate out each individual part of the assignment into it's own "Assignment" in Canvas, but there is something to be said about keeping all directions for an assignment in one spot, too.

So, the current issue for us is that one assignment has multiple rubrics...but since we can only have one rubric per assignment, we have to combine all the rubrics into one...which could potentially get quite long.  Then you get into needing some kind of row in the rubric that should be a line of text with no points (to use as a divider between parts of the rubric).  See my, now archived, Feature Idea:

Hope this makes sense.