[Rubrics] Formatting of Rubrics

It would be nice to be able to format the content in the "Rating Description" box. For example, a lot of my school's rubrics are holistic, requiring us to break down each level into multiple facets. Because Canvas does not have a feature currently to allow us to insert spaces, our rubrics come out as one big paragraph, making it more challenging for both students and teachers to read the criteria when marking.

Being able to add bullets, bold, italic, underline, or even being able to separate with a new line would be very helpful when creating or importing a rubric.

 

(Example from CanvasContent: Letter content lacks coherence and unity. There may be a misunderstanding of the purpose of the letter, of the characters or the nature of their relationship, or of the outcome of the story. No direct or indirect reference to setting. Language: Vocabulary is very basic, excessively colloquial or inappropriate to the audience. Language conventions are misused. Mechanics: Writing is riddled with spelling, grammar, usage and/or punctuation errors. Structure is seriously flawed; errors impede meaning. Style: No sense of voice or audience. Alternatively, the voice used may not be in character. Transition use is minimal to non-existent.

 

In our old LMS, it was like this:

Content: Letter content lacks coherence and unity. There may be a misunderstanding of the purpose of the letter, of the characters or the nature of their relationship, or of the outcome of the story. No direct or indirect reference to setting.

 

Language: Vocabulary is very basic, excessively colloquial or inappropriate to the audience. Language conventions are misused.

 

Mechanics: Writing is riddled with spelling, grammar, usage and/or punctuation errors. Structure is seriously flawed; errors impede meaning.

 

Style: No sense of voice or audience. Alternatively, the voice used may not be in character. Transition use is minimal to non-existent.)

Added to Theme

Improved rubric creation and usability Theme Status: In Development

15 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @katie_matthews ‌, I know this isn't what you've requested—but did you know you can already do this when creating outcomes? I created an outcome whose "longer description" I simply copied your example above into the Rich Content Editor for the new outcome. After I aligned it with a rubric, here's what I see when I click on "view longer description":

281624_formatted-long-description.png

By creating each row of the rubric as a course-level outcome, the desired formatting is achieved. I recognize that it is unconventional, if not altogether undesirable, to employ outcomes for this unintended purpose, but I can also see how this might come in handy for your use case while this idea moves forward for voting.

ronmarx
Community Contributor

Just made sure that I voted up for this great idea.

Please refer to the idea, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12350-simplify-rubrics-look-and-operation , that has a slightly different focus. It suggests a non-scored Rating Header that includes rating levels and descriptions. As suggested here, these labels and descriptions are not required, but would be available as options for the K-12 teacher. Rubrics for assignments at these grades usually present students with Lexile-leveled descriptions to enable them to understand expectations.

ccassidy1
Community Explorer

A great idea. In addition to this, we would love to see an alternative orientation for rubrics. Our preference is to display rubric marks/comments in ascending order to show growth through a continuum.

I can not see a way to currently do this, please let me know if I'm wrong!

This is what can currently be achieved:

291341_Writing Rubric.PNG

This is what we would like to achieve:

291342_Writing Rubric.jpg

ronmarx
Community Contributor

To all the rubric-minded instructors, teachers, and designers here:  Create a Secondary Rubric Structure to Conform with Conventions has been moved from moderation and is now Open for VOTING.

The rubric design convention suggests that the criteria grid be evenly distributed across the matrix, as  @ccassidy1 ‌'s rubric schematic, above, shows.

rubric format

bps
Community Novice

This is not hard to fix and it should be fixed quickly.  It is embarrassing to have rubrics that are unaligned and cannot be changed.  Thank you for your help with this.

jrpierc2
Community Member

Somehow I managed to get one row of my rubric to have blank lines, but can't figure out how I did it. Check it out ...

Screen shot of formatted rubric entry.

jknox1
Community Novice

Adding in bullet points into a rubric would be especially helpful in putting in criteria so the ratings could identify for example, that 3/4 criteria were met. 

GideonWilliams
Community Champion

This would be such a good step. Being able to bullet point key outcomes when for example you use a Range rubric:

Surely not a difficult task? Just replacing the text box with one with formatting features

jzaldivar
Community Explorer

I am new to Canvas and trying to create my first rubric. I am totally disappointed by the lack of even simple formatting for the text in the criteria! 

I mean, something as simple as being able to have multiple rows isn't available! I cannot enter:

Analysis:
- identifies all ins and outs.
- an in is not missclassified as out or viceversa
- does not include pseudocode

Is there any way I can vote to have this implemented? This conversation only has three stars.

juhall
Community Explorer

This is so needed!