Adding Outcomes to Assignments

(8)

Currently, the only way that I know of to add an outcome to an assignment is to add a rubric that has an outcome to that assignment. This can be quite time consuming and sometimes, unnecessary. An assignment does not always need a rubric. 

It would be ideal to have a +Outcome button next to the +Rubric button once an assignment has been created. This will track mastery of outcomes very easily and teachers can use that information when they are doing standards reporting and data analysis. 

21 Comments
am_jagusztyn
Community Novice

I completely agree. I think rubrics need to be separate from outcomes. Outcomes do not function like rubric criterion and should not fall to the same requirements as them. I think the outcomes could be at the top of the assignment, or listed in a different location than the rubric even. This also would serve to eliminate the problem that when you unclick "use criterion for scoring" and then use free form comments on the rubric, the outcome you have added it useless. In this case, all you can add are comments to the outcome, but then in Learning Mastery, the student sees nothing but an ungraded outcome rubric. Not only is this unintuitive, it's confusing for the instructors and students. I hope this idea gains traction!

jrdrinnon
Community Novice

Amen. Please separate outcomes from rubrics!  I also want to see outcomes linkable to all types of assignments. I currently use MindTap and Launchpad for many graded assignments but since I didn't set these up as Canvas assignments, I have no options for linking outcomes to these assignments. I really want to be able to easily link outcomes to any and every assignment within a course without having to go through a lot of trouble. 

Why not create a feature where a table of all assignments down the rows and a column of all possible outcomes for a course and let people go in and check all the outcomes that apply to the many assignments within a course.

michael_barbour
Community Participant

This is a great suggestion.  The limitation of Outcomes at present makes it a pretty useless tool, unless you are a very small organization.  Being able to attach an Outcome to a specific line of a rubric or to an entire question bank, but not to a quiz or assignment limits which assignments one can realistically use with Outcomes.  This situation, at least in our case, makes Outcomes a feature that we just can't use (even though we want to).

There is the additional issue of this limitation with third party tools.  For example, say my quizzes are delivered in ExamSoft or some other third party application that is simply more powerful and functional than the Canvas quiz feature.  Even though I am using quizzes, because I am not using the Canvas quiz feature it means I am not using a Canvas question bank.  So there is no way for me to attach a Canvas Outcome to the question bank hosted in a third party tool.  But if I could just attach the Outcome to the Quiz itself in Canvas, then when the third party tool populates the grades back into Canvas through the LTI, it would align those grades to the Outcome for the quiz.

MKB

dinamarie1973
Community Novice

We need this!  Every assignment does not require a rubric!!

timothy_maw
Community Champion

I can agree with this. Outcomes is something we would like to use more but not every outcome fits into a rubric for assignments. It can be difficult to try and build an outcome rubric when the rubric doesn't really make sense for it.

michael_barbour
Community Participant

While not part of the actual suggestion, I have faculty that would love to be able to actually tag an Outcome to a particular piece of static content (e.g., a page or other item inside of the module).

rene_carter
Community Member

I AGREE

In the outcomes, it is possible to create mastery and look at student achievement and data, yet you have to create a rubric for every single assignment in order to do that.

 

I teach a course that has close to 30 standards that we progressively teach. I desire to have the option to choose from a drop-down box the standard(s) for each assignment or quiz or discussion without creating hundreds of rubrics. It could link to the outcomes standards and achievement side. The standards can already be found for all levels and subject areas, from my knowledge. It would be nice to evaluate the student's growth throughout the semester without making more work for teachers.

 

As a teacher, I would like to still have the rubric opportunity for grading purposes yet still be able to link it to a standard. For example, in cross-curriculum assignments, where I have a student write an environmental essay in Biology that encourages literacy. The rubric would include items for grammar, citations, and content and used when grading it; yet it could be linked to a standard such as  2.2.1 "Infer how human activities may impact the environment". 

 

The goal of teachers is to help the student connect the content to real situations, develop 21st-century skills, and better prepare them for their next steps. Creating assignments that assess them with rubrics yet linking them with standards would be a step in the right direction. 

jschreier
Community Participant

Please, please, please do this Canvas! It is an easy fix. You can do it. The Outcomes usage would go up substantially if this was separate from Rubrics. Right now, literally no one at our college uses Outcomes. 

kraimont
Community Participant

With 46 votes this will never move into development. Share the link to the idea and let's get this going!

thauff
Community Explorer

Amen sister-- this is a such an obvious one I can't believe we even need to vote on it... 

aboerngen
Community Member

Please add my voice to this choir! As we are preparing to implement Canvas soon, I was shocked to learn the lack of separation between outcomes and rubrics. Thank you!

rrodgers1
Community Member

Just commenting in hopes of bumping this back up into the consciousness of the decision-makers at Canvas. You really, really should be able to tag assignments with standards without creating a rubric. Really. 

lflynn
Community Member

Yes! Make outcomes a course-wide feature that can be attached to individual assignments,  but not necessarily only tied to a rubric.

ClaireBorja
Community Explorer

Agree, it is helpful to have it available in New Quizzes at the quiz level, should be the same for assignments.

cindyk
Community Participant

We are just now exploring using Outcomes.  Why duplicate what has already been done when creating the Outcome?  Being forced to create and use a rubric is not helpful and masks the assignment's impact on the outcome.  Or am I missing how to link a rubric to an outcome?

emerymath
Community Novice

I agree! I'm new here and just learned that we can't add outcomes to assignments :(. I would love to add outcomes directly to assignments and hope this change can be made.

cindyk
Community Participant

I agree with everyone else.  Outcomes and rubrics are different!  Keep the ability to add outcomes to rubrics but allow outcomes to be used alone on assignments, discussions, and not just quizzes.  When a course has several outcomes (I typically have 15-25), creating a rubric for each combination used on different assignments becomes cumbersome.

Also, I HATE the way canvas sorts rubrics - who memorizes course codes to look up previously used rubrics?  At the very least, the current course should be the default.

 

JaxKey68
Community Member

Everything you all have said, I AGREE 100%. How do I vote for the Outcomes+ without a rubric attachment, for each assignment. I love the list of assignments and potentially having the ability to just have a drop down next to each assignment allowing for attachment of specific outcomes that student, parents, supervisors can also see.

 

ritaw
Community Explorer

Also making sure we get the data on the outcome in the admin report, Outcome Results.  The student score on the assignment should reflect that they have mastered (or not) that outcome.

Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

Could we have an outcome aligned to more assignment types, such as External tool assignments? That would really open up outcome usage in our courses. Outcome separate from grading.