Outcome Changes

[Marisa_Rickel]

Mastery and Competency-based learning are gaining traction in education and changing the way educators assess students. For those of us in the midst of this change, the learning mastery gradebook and outcomes are very important in communicating not only grades but also areas students are struggling in or mastering. The shift should be towards students focused on learning and mastering content and skills- not hyper-focusing on the fact that they need '3 more points' or are '2%' away from mastery in a concept or course. The functionality of the rubrics already allows for criteria to have ranges in scores as well as to remove the numerics of the criteria. These 2 things should be available for outcomes as well and occur at the same time.

Obviously any kind of gradebook calculation must come from numbers so the removal of points its for student viewing only. The idea is for students to understand where they are at in their mastery of learning outcomes and not just look at points. From an educator standpoint, this can be frustrating when a student plays the "can I do extra credit?" or "can you just bump me the 2%?". The removal of points from view pushes students to look at where their strengths and weaknesses are in terms of outcomes. Why we can do this is a regular criterion and not an outcome, I do not understand.

The ranges would give educators a fluid scale with which to work on assessing mastery of an outcome. Due to the limited calculation methods of outcome mastery, being able to control the score of each outcome assessed is important. So each rating would give the teacher the ability to choose a score within a determined range.

These two concepts need to be added to outcomes and allow the assignment to be graded based on the outcomes. As a district, we only grade using outcomes in rubrics so this change is important.

I saw another idea that suggests having a separate button from rubrics for outcomes. I support that as well (I voted for it), but it should still have the changes I am suggesting. outcomes

[melayna_moore]

Great idea! I was trying to figure out if there was a way to get my students to only see outcome progress and not points. I think this will be a great change in the right direction.

[JaiWOwen]

I am am an admin for my company and have been looking into using outcomes and rubrics this has lead me to come up with my suggestion. My suggestion is a simple one really, the ability to add ranges to outcomes like we can with rubrics.

[afoote]

@JaiWOwen 

Thanks for your idea. As an admin, you are able to add a criterion rating to an outcome when you create an outcome. For more information, please visit How do I create an outcome for an account? 

If this is not what you are looking for, please clarify what you mean by adding ranges to outcomes.

Best wishes,

Alli

[JaiWOwen]

@afoote 

When setting criterion ratings on a rubric you can set it to be a range, example; 8 - >5, my suggestion is the ability to do the same with outcome criterion ratings.

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.