Brightspace: Rubrics

Rubrics are a great tool to clearly document grading criteria for both students and instructors. Brightspace offers an interactive rubric tool where students can view rubrics associated with activities in the course. Also, instructors can use the rubrics as an interactive grading tool that allows for real-time scoring on the rubric elements and the ability to leave detailed feedback for students on each aspect of the rubric criteria.

Building a New Rubric

Name, Type, and Scoring

Go to Other Course Tools in the course navigation bar and select Rubrics
Click New Rubric
Enter a name for the rubric
In the top right, you can control the Status of your rubric.
Below the Name box, you can set the type of rubric. There are two types:
1. Analytic: which gives the ability to add multiple criteria groups/rows and provide feedback to each column
2. Holistic: which gives one row and no ability to give feedback for each column.
To the right of that, set the scoring. Choose between No Score, Points, or Custom Points. Custom Points allows your points to not be incremental i.e. two columns can be worth the same amount of points.
Use reverse level order if you want the columns to be switched from high- to-low to low-to-high.

Screenshot of the Brightspace Rubrics page. Specifically, this screenshot show the Status options available for Rubrics. In the top right, there is a light blue dropdown button. The text in the button is darker blue and says Status: Published. There is an arrow icon to the right of that. Below the button is a vertical list of options. They are Published (there is a checkmark to the left), Archived, or Draft.

Screenshot of the Brightspace Rubrics page. There is a thin white horizontal text filed with black text at the top that says Rubric 1. Below that, there are three separate options. The first is text that reads Type: Analytic (and an arrow pointing down to the right of it). There is a pink square around this. The second is text that says Scoring: Points (with an arrow pointing down to the right of it). There is a pink square around this. The last is an icon with an arrow pointing left and an arrow pointing right. To the right of that there is text that says Reverse Level Order. There is a pink box around this.

What's in a Rubric?

Rubrics are made up of two things: Rows and Columns.
1. Rows are made up of...
  1. Criterion usually represents a specific outcome or goal that you're measuring against.
  2. Criterion Group are groups of criterions that are measured in conjunction with one another
2. Columns are made up of the level of achievement, sometimes called scale. The level of achievement allows you to add levels as well as points to the rubric.

Screenshot of the Brightspace Rubric creation page. There are two rows with six columns. Both rows have the exact same thing. The first cell has text in the upper left that says New Criterion. There are three dots to the right of that in the cell. To the right of that, there are four white cells. Half way down the cells, there is a merged row with text inside that says Initial Feedback. The last column has text in the upper-center that says (slash) four.

Filling in the Details

Screenshot of the Brightspace Rubric creation page. There is text in the top left that says Criteria. There is a pink box around it.

Add in a name for your criterian group, if you're using it

Screenshot of the Brightspace Rubric creation page. There is a vertical, gray rectangle with a white plus sign init. To the right of that, there is a horizontal white text box. There is text inside that says Level four. Below that, to the left, is a smaller white textbox with the number four in it. To the right of that is text that says pt. To the right of that is a black trashcan icon.

2. Adjust your level of achievement and points associated with each level (if necessary). You can add more levels by clicking on the plus icons to the left of Level 4 or to the right of Level 1

Screenshot of the Brightspace Rubric creation page. There is text in the top left that says New Criterion. There is a pink box around it.

3. Add the name of your first criterion to the first row.

Screenshot of Brightspace Rubric creation. There is one row across the top with a column for each level of the rubric. The row below shows a series of white cells. There is a pink box around it.

4. Fill in the details for each level of achievement. Repeat steps one through four above as needed to build your rubric. The Inital Feedback allows you to add feedback that will be universally applicable to those who are scored at each level.

Overall Score

The Overall Score box aligns each submission based on the overall rubric score. You can adjust the levels, points, and add in overall details for each level.

Setting Options

Below the Overall Score box, open up the Options menu (if it isn't open already)
Set the Rubric Visibility:
1. Rubric is visible to students
2. Rubric is hidden from students (you can decide if just the feedback in the rubric is viewable to students)
3. Rubric is hidden from students until feedback is published
Score Visibility allows for scores to be hidden from students
The description box can be used to add a description that isn't shared with students.
Advanced Availability: Allows you to associate a rubric with Competencies as a means of assessment. If you have questions on this, please reach out to the DePeters Family Center.
Click Close

Adding a Rubric to an Assignment

After following the steps above, let's add the rubric to an assignment
For an existing assignment:
1. Go to the course navigation and click on Assignments.
2. Click on the name of the assignment and click Edit Assignment.
3. In the right-hand side find the Evaluation & Feedback menu
4. Click Add Rubric and then click Add Existing
5. Click the checkbox to the left to insert your rubric. You can also click the icon to the right (magnifying glass) to open the rubric in a new window.
6. The rubric should now be associated with the assignment.
For a new assignment:
1. Set up your assignment as outlined on the Assignment page
2. On the Evaluation & Feedback menu, select Add Rubric and Create New
3. Follow the steps under Building a New Rubric to create your new rubric.
4. Click Attach Rubric to add the rubric to your assignment.