Contributed by Jane Nguyen, Instructional Designer I (CSE)
One of the minimum standards criteria for a fully approved online class is the presence of grading rubrics either in the course syllabus or in appropriate content areas in Blackboard. Aside from the “required” aspect, however, grading rubrics are simply good for professors and for students. When done well, they allow for easy, quick grading for the former and a sense of being fairly assessed for the latter.
Though many faculty members do use rubrics of some kind, there is relatively little use of Blackboard grading rubrics. This is unfortunate, as this feature is very easy to use.
There are basically two ways to approach creating a grading rubric for an assignment: 1) while you are creating the assignment. Under the “grading” setting, there is a button that says “Add Rubric.” Here, you can either select a rubric you’ve already created, create a brand new rubric template, or create from an existing rubric (edit something that already exists), 2) go to the Rubrics section of your Blackboard course and create one or as many rubrics as you want, without association to any particular assignment at the time of creation (you might still build the rubric knowing what your assignment will be, however, as you’d need to know categories of assessment and what descriptions to include.)
For this article, I am going to talk about option 2: creating a rubric not yet attached to an assignment. Let’s say you are teaching a course in which, on top of 10 multiple-choice quizzes for which you do not need a grading rubric, the students will have three major assignments: 1) a presentation, 2) a research paper, and 3) a final project. You want to have a rubric for all three so that students will have a sense of why they got the grade they did (this is, after all, a more subjective evaluation rather than simply “right or wrong” answers on a multiple-choice quiz or test.
Keep in mind that even though you have to make three different rubrics, you do not necessarily have to start from scratch with each one if there is some similarity of criteria across each assignment. (e.g. Grammar may be something you are assessing students on in all three assignments. Once you’ve written descriptions for varying levels of achievement in grammar, that can easily be re-used for the other two rubrics. Do take advantage of the ‘create from existing rubric’ function, as this allows you to adapt something already made instead of starting from scratch.)
To create a rubric, go to Course Management on the left-hand menu. Then go to Course Tools. There are a lot of sub-items under Course Tools, but it’s easy enough to scroll down to Rubrics. Once you click on Rubrics, you will see at the top left a Create Rubrics button. You will see that Blackboard has a simple rubric already in place. This, however, is just to give users a sense of the template. You can add columns (Levels of Achievement, such as Excellent, Good, Average, Needs Improvement, Poor, & No Credit) as you see fit, as well as rows (Criteria determined by you—for instance, you may be looking at five particular aspects of an assignment—Focus, Analysis, Research, Connections, Composition—while another professor customizing the rubric may have other criteria—Calculations, Graphics, Multi-Media Presentation, Evaluation, Concluding Thoughts). What you’re “looking for” [students to do] in an assignment is up to you.
Please note too that you can choose to have a points or percent-based grade rubric. If you choose the latter, make sure the criteria on the left-hand rows have percent amounts that add up to 100. (e.g. Focus—10%; Analysis—30%; Research—20%; Connections—20%, Composition—20%). For Levels of Achievement that make up the various columns, be sure to indicate what percent credit a student would get for achieving at that level (e.g. ‘Excellent’ is often associated with 95 to 100%; ‘Good’ is associated with 80 to 85%; ‘Average’ is associated with 65 to 75%...)
There is more to creating a grade rubric than what has been written here, but this information certainly gets you started and going in the right direction. Fortunately, Blackboard grade rubrics feature is very intuitive and can often be navigated without outside help. If you do need assistance or want to ask questions, however, don’t hesitate to reach out to an instructional designer. We are happy to help. Also, be sure to take advantage of this Blackboard help document related to grade rubrics.
