Creating a Rubric is made up of 2 tabs: one for the rubric properties, and one for designing the rubric levels and criteria.
Three videos created by D2L are available to watch as an alternative to reading this article:
- Video 1-Create a Rubric-The properties tab https://youtu.be/6w95isbLjeY
- Video 2-Creating an Analytic Rubric https://youtu.be/nGjg8XVH9HQ
- Video 3-Creating a Holistic Rubric https://youtu.be/C_ltFW-Yh4w
To create a rubric:
- Select the New Rubric Link to begin the process.
- Enter a name for the rubric.
- Select the appropriate status from the rubric status menu. This can be changed later. There are three rubric statuses available.
- Draft is the initial status for any new rubric. A rubric in draft is not available to be associated with assessments. Keep rubrics in draft mode until they are ready for use.
- Published is the typical status for a rubric in regular use. Rubrics with a "published" status may not be edited.
- Archived rubrics are not available for new associations, but existing associations remain functional.
- Fill out the description field. Rubrics may be shared within your organization, so be very clear in your description.
- From the rubric type menu, select between analytic and holistic. In practice, most rubrics are analytic.
- An analytic rubric breaks performance down into multiple criteria. Each criteria is then scored separately, and the overall level of achievement is a combination of these scores.
- A holistic rubric provides a single holistic description of each overall level of achievement. Performance is then assessed by selecting the most appropriate level.
- The number of levels is set to 4 by default, but you can change this now or when you're in the process of creating your rubric.
- Select the scoring method. The options in the menus will differ between selecting analytic and holistic rubrics.
- When finished, click Save.
You are now ready to build the levels and criteria for your rubric. The two parts of the article below are divided based on your decision to use either an analytic rubric or a holistic one.
Analytic rubrics allow you to assess participants' achievements based on multiple criteria in a single rubric.
Once a rubric has been saved, you cannot change the type or scoring method.
Levels & Criteria Tab: Add criteria, add a level, add a criteria group, and reorder your criteria.
- Click on the drop down arrow to edit each Criterion. You can change the criterion label, enter a description for each level across, and enter feedback.
- Click on the drop down arrow to edit each Level. You can change the level label, score (points), enter or edit the description and feedback for each criterion.
Scoring Methods
There are 3 scoring methods available for analytic rubrics:
- Custom Points-In custom points, the points can be different for each criteria, or row, because they are indicated within each cell in the rubrics table.
- Points-both text and points are used to assess performance
- Text Only-performance is expressed using only text.
Holistic rubrics allow you to assess participants' overall achievement on an activity or item based on a single criterion using predefined achievement levels.
Once a rubric has been saved, you cannot change the type or scoring method.
- Click on the levels tab.
- This is a percentage scoring method. You can add a level, edit levels, reverse the level order, and within the rubric, we can see the level title, start range, description and feedback. You can edit an individual level by using the action context menu or edit all levels at once, using edit levels.
- Enter or edit your rubric details. The start range for your lowest achievement level is automatically set for 0. Make your achievement level descriptions very detailed. Standard feedback can be very helpful o the participants and the graders, especially during a common assessment.
Scoring methods:
- Percentage-Both text and percentage are used to reflect performance.
- Text Only-Only Text is used to reflect performance.
Once you've created a rubric, if the assessment needs to be connected back to a course objective, you can do that by following the directions found in the article below, created by the Institutional Research for Improvement office.