Rubrics

Rubrics are advanced grading forms that are useful for ensuring consistent grading practices, especially when grading as a team. Rubrics consist of a set of criteria and an evaluation scale with levels corresponding to point values.

The raw rubric score is calculated as a sum of all criteria grades. The final grade is calculated by comparing the actual score with the worst/best possible score. For more on calculating grades, see Grade Calculation in Moodle.

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Moodle allow you to create a new grading form or make a copy of any rubric you already have in any of your Moodle courses. 

Moodle allow you to create a new grading form or make a copy of any rubric you already have in any of your Moodle courses. 


Grading Guides

Grading guides are a simple alternative to rubrics.

When grading with a Grading guide, the instructor designs a simple set of criteria and then, when assessing student work, a form is presented where they can leave a comment and a score for each criterion. The form then totals the scores to calculate a grade according to the Grade settings for the assignment.

Unlike a Rubric, a Grading guide does not let you rank each criterion according to more than one level; rather, each criterion has one comment box, and one box for entering a numeric score.

Assignments and Worskhops directly use Rubrics or Grading guides. (Rubrics in Moodle are different from Turnitin Rubrics in Moodle.) To grade other activity types with a rubric, you can set up a separate assignment just for marking. For example, you could set up an ungraded Wiki activity called "Unit One Wiki", and a graded assignment called "Rubric for Unit One Wiki."


Create a New Rubric or Grading Guide

Once you have created an assignment, you can add a Rubric or Grading Guide. For instructions on how to create an assignment, see Add an Assignment Activity in Moodle.


How to create a new Rubric or Grading Guide for an Assignment?

Step 1 - Open the Assignment, and in the Actions menu (clock the (blue star) icon) in the top right corner of the assignments page, click Advanced grading. The Advanced grading page will open.

If you are creating a new assignment, under Grade, from the Grading method drop-down menu, select Rubric or Grading guide. Click Save and Display and the Advanced grading page will open.

Step 2 - On the Advanced grading page, click Define new grading form from scratch. The Define rubric or Define grading guide page will open.

Step 3 - Enter a Name and Description for the grading form.

Step 4 - To add criteria (the specific elements to be graded): For a Rubric the rubric will start out with one blank criterion in a row. For a Grading guide, the Grading guide will start out with one criterion in a box.

For a Rubric:

  • Select Click to edit criterion. A blank entry box will appear. Enter a description for the Criterion.

  • The following boxes represent Levels for rating student performance. Graders will select the level that best describes the student's performance for that criterion. For each level select Click to edit level to add a description. To edit the points awarded for each level, click the points value.

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  • You must start with a level that has a point value of ZERO (eg., scale ranging from 0-3). If you do not include a "0" level, the rubric grade will not calculate correctly.

  • You must start with a level that has a point value of ZERO (eg., scale ranging from 0-3). If you do not include a "0" level, the rubric grade will not calculate correctly.


For a Grading guide:

To reorder criteria, click the up or down arrows.

Step 5 - Select the Rubric options or Grading guide options for the assignment: These mostly control how much of the rubric your students can see and when; and for Rubrics, whether graders will have an entry box for additional text comments.

Step 6 - When you have filled out all the criterion and definitions, click Save marking grading guide and make it ready. You can also click Save as draft to save without having to complete the criterion and level definitions.

You can always come back and edit your rubric by opening the Assignment, navigating to the Actions Menu (Gray gear icon ) >Advanced grading, and clicking Define rubric.


How to Copy (Re-use) a Rubric or Grading Guide?

Instead of defining a new grading form from scratch, you can make a copy of an existing Advanced grading form from any of your Moodle courses by choosing to use it as a template. You can then edit the copy to fit the assignment you are grading without affecting the rubric you copied.

Step 1- On your course page, click Turn editing on. The edit links and icons will appear.

Step 2 - To add a new Assignment:

In the Section of your course where you want the Assignment activity, click + Add an activity or resource then select Assignment and click Add. The Adding a new Assignment page will open.

To use an Advanced grading form to grade an assignment already in the course:

  • Open the Assignment, and in the Actions menu, click Advanced grading. Skip to step 5 in these instructions.

Step 3 - Configure settings for the assignment. From the Grading method drop-down menu, select Grading guide or Rubric.

Step 4- Click Save and display. The Advanced grading page will open.

Step 5- Click Create new grading form from a template. The Grading forms search page will open displaying templates shared by others which you have access to.

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If you did not enter a search term, you may need to scroll down to below the shared forms, to find your own Rubrics or Grading guides.

If you did not enter a search term, you may need to scroll down to below the shared forms, to find your own Rubrics or Grading guides.

Any edits you make at this point will affect only the Grading form associated with the current assignment.

Step 6- When you are done editing, click Save. You will return to the Advanced grading page for the assignment.

To return to your course, or to the assignment page, use the links in the Navigation tray on the left, or the breadcrumb links at the top of your Moodle page.


Grade an Assignment with a Rubric or Grading Guide

Step 1- On your course page, click the link to the assignment.

Step 2 - On the Assignment page, click View/grade all submissions.

Step 3 - In the Edit column for a particular student, click Grade. The Grading & feedback page for that student opens showing a grading form below the student's submission. 

Step 4 - If using a Rubric:
For each Criterion:

If using a Grading guide:
For each Criterion:

Step 5 - If Feedback Comments are enabled in the Assignment Settings, you can also give general comments on the entire submission in the Feedback comments entry box below the rubric.

Step 6 - When you are done grading click Save changes or, to grade the next student's submission, click Save and show next.


FAQs

No, Moodle will scale the rubric/marking guide score to 100 even if your rubric/marking guide doesn’t add up to 100 (assuming you haven’t changed this in the assignment settings).
e.g. an assignment with a rubric/marking guide that scores 20/40 will appear as 50/100 in the gradebook.

The rubric will work out the marks based on the points awarded for each criterion. When you create the rubric, you will be able to determine the points each level is worth.

For example, if you have chosen the levels in the green boxes for each criterion, the student would receive a mark of 6/9, this will appear as 66.7/100 in the gradebook

The marking guide will work out the marks based on the points decided by the grader, the grader can only give a score up to the maximum marks.

For example, if the grader awards a mark of 7 on the assignment below, the student will receive a mark of 7/10, this will appear as 70/100 in the gradebook

Only the Marking Guide option gives you the chance to use ‘frequently used comments’.  If a teacher regularly uses the same comments when marking, it is possible to add these to a frequently used comments bank. 

  • Click the Click to edit link and add a comment. 

  • Click the +Add frequently used comment button to add another one and repeat as needed. 

When you reuse a marking guide the frequently used comments will be duplicated for reuse too. 

Each time you reuse a marking guide or rubric, a new version is created.  This means you can edit the new version without it affecting any of the previous versions.

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