There are many ways to assess student learning. Traditional assessments like multiple choice exams measure how much students can remember or recall about a subject. Authentic assessments, on the other hand, provide students the opportunity to apply their new skills in a way that is relevant to how they will use them outside the classroom. Authentic assessments are often better measurements of student learning, but they can be harder to grade due to subjectivity. This is where rubrics can be extremely useful.
A rubric is a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of student work. Because authentic assessments can be very subjective, rubrics help instructors evaluate them as objectively as possible. It is best practice to use rubrics for all authentic assessments like student writing, projects, presentations, and practical skills applications. Even discussions greatly benefit from a scoring rubric.
Brightspace provides instructors two types of rubrics:
A holistic rubric consists of a single scale with all criteria to be included in the evaluation being considered together (e.g., clarity, organization, and mechanics). With a holistic rubric the rater assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student work. Holistic rubrics offer an improvement over a simple numerical score or grade (A, B, C, D) because they communicate evaluative criteria achievement to the learner.
An analytic rubric resembles a grid with the criteria for a student product listed in the leftmost column and with levels of performance listed across the top row often using numbers and/or descriptive tags. When scoring with an analytic rubric each of the criteria is scored individually, allowing a single rubric to evaluate multiple assessment criteria (i.e. authentic assessments).
There are several ways to score a rubric:
No Score: Performance levels are indicated by text written in advance by the instructor.
Points: This scoring method is only available to analytic rubrics. Performance levels indicated by points, with explanatory text written in advance by the instructor.
Custom Points: This scoring method is only available to analytic rubrics. The Custom Points scoring method is similar to the Points scoring method, but you can customize the points given for each criterion.
Percentages: This scoring method is only available to holistic rubrics. A holistic rubric using Percentages can be automatically assessed based on the score of its associated item, for example, a Grade item.
There is no way to “upload" an existing rubric from an Excel file or other type of table – you will need to enter the text into Brightspace manually.
Instructors can now print or download a PDF of a preview or evaluated rubric. Students can also print or download a PDF of a rubric from the desktop browser implementation of Brightspace Learning Environment. The Print button displays above the top-right corner of the rubric.
You are able to copy Rubrics across courses via Copy Components. Check the Rubrics box if you want to copy all rubrics from that course, or choose a specific Rubric to copy.
If you have already created a Rubric in Turnitin and want to use that for an assessment in Brightspace, you'll need to manually transfer the Rubric into Brightspace. The benefit of using Brightspace's Rubrics instead of Turnitin's, is that the feedback from the Rubric and the Rubric score can be automatically transferred to Grades after you asses with a rubric.
If a Rubric is associated to an assignment or a discussion topic and set to visible, students can see the Rubric before they start the assignment or participate in the discussion. Students can see their completed Rubric including feedback in the following places:
Grades
Assignments tool
Discussions tool
Yes, you can! Either via Insert Quicklink or via Add More Activities. We recommend using the Insert Quicklink way. In some cases you might want to use a Rubric, without linking it to a Brightspace assignment or discussion topic (e.g. oral examination). In case you want to share the Rubric with the students as preparation and add a description/text as explanation, you should place the rubric as Quicklink in a HTML file.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to adjust a Rubric after the evaluation of a student submission. We advise you to check the Rubric before publishing. It is possible to make comments in the evaluation of students, which can be adjusted at all times. You can make a copy of an active rubric to edit and then connect the new version to the assignment or discussion.