Rubric without points

[mark_soole]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Hello

We would like to use rubric without having to put in points against each line.

One of the more difficult issues we have is that rubrics in Canvas need a mark against them, even if they are not tied directly to the final mark and do not have a total. In my university, academics use rubrics only as an overall indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of work. If we put marks against them, we find the student may focus on the score rather than the on what is being communicated, and in any case the mark on the rubric has no meaning.

Attached is a description of the simple change we would like

see in Canvas

Mark

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-14928 .

[denise_lombardo]

Absolutely -  I often do this in my own grade book as a reference...but I don't show the kids as I want them to focus on the feedback, not the number. Dylan Wiliam mentions similar research in discussing the effectiveness of NOT giving marks so that students think about what is said...research has shown that as soon as kids see the number, they don't look any further. Thanks, Paul!

[ctmaya]

I wish I could vote more than once for this one! Sometimes you want to give constructive feedback that does not include points and is not associated with a grade.

[jstewart]

I also echo both Paul,Melissa and Denise's comments. Attaching marks to rubrics for our Junior and Middle School students is in direct contradiction to what we are trying to achieve with the rubric. We want the students to understand the criteria for success and to be clear on what learning they need to demonstrate in order to achieve well, and then when reflecting upon the task understand how they were graded based upon explicit criteria. A grade does not demonstrate this at all, and whilst both the descriptors and the grades are currently shown simultaneously, the research (including Black and Wilam, 1998 and Wiliam, 2010) clearly shows the effectiveness clear feedback and not giving grades. Denise's comment is spot on - many students just see the grade and move on, hence don't learn from the rubric and feedback associated with it, and hence are less likely to demonstrate better understanding in subsequent assessments.

Having the marks show to teachers in the backend is fine. Let's face it, the overall grading scheme of rubrics and assessment in Canvas is based upon points, so it is helpful for teachers to be able to see how points are assigned to reach a suggested overall grade, but for many students is counterproductive and devalues the effectiveness of rubrics.

Without muddying the waters, I would also like to suggest the following (both of which are related to this idea/request)

1. Support Paul's other comment, the option to have individual rubric criteria not be used in calculating point totals for the assignment would be invaluable to us. This can be done with Outcomes, but many schools (including us) also use reporting indicators which we don't load as an outcome. We'd like to include these in our rubrics so we can track student progress against them, however not have points allocated to them so they are not used to calculate the points.

2. Where a grading scale other than points is used for an assignment, don't show the points to students (or at least the option not to). If we are grading against an A - E grade for example, Canvas stubbornly puts the mark/points against it as well even though we want a grade scale, not points. Once again, when students see a number, they have a tendency not to look any further, and for our Junior and Middle School students we don't show numbers . . . . .

[anna_selway]

This would help so much for the majority of quals taught in my college in the UK.  Wish I could vote more than one.

[mcsmith]

Hi All, Thanks for all the great dialogue around this. If you were using the rubric for grading, would there be value to not displaying points for each criterion row but still giving a total score to the assignment that rubric is tied to. For example, If a rubric had 3 rows ( we will call them A, B, C for simplicity) all using the same rating scale Proficient(3), Approaching(2), Not Met (1)  and a student got proficient for rows A and B and approaching for C. The student would see a total score of 8 but if the student clicked on the rubric they would only see the ratings without points. I would love to get some thoughts around this. Thanks!

 @mark_soole ​ pmillar​

[susan_cornish]

For us, we don't want students to see marks at all because they are often misleading. At the end of each unit, our students are basically either competent in the workplace skill or not yet competent. They may get 80% of the available points in activities yet they may still be lacking a key ingredient in terms of competency.

It's important to be able to give useful feedback, but marks need to be optional.

[pcallil]

Is it possible to have assessment components - mark ups, rubrics and comments released at varying times

This would allow feedback to be given before marks and de-emphasise marks in favour of constructive comments and mark ups.

This is quite similar to the request ie the concept of de-emphasising marks.

[kmartin4]

I agree with Mark--I only use rubrics for guidance . . . to communicate what students need to improve. I, too find, that students get too caught in the points.

[pmillar]

Hi McCall,

I think what people are probably looking for is the option of hiding the points from the view of the student using a tick box when creating the rubric. It would be great to be able to do this for each criteria and/or for the rubric as a whole. Schools quite often use long descriptors for each criterion (particularly for formative assessment), which is what they want the student to focus on. It's only for summative assessments where points become more important (not to take away from the feedback though).

Hope that makes sense! Deactivated user​

[Amanda_L_Albrig]

I agree with what many others have said. In our use of rubrics (mostly formative) we are looking for level of proficiency or competence and opportunities to provide feedback. We are not looking to use the rubric to score or grade the assignment.

Amanda