Create a rubric

What this achieves

A rubric is a structured scoring guide for work that cannot be marked automatically. It gives every grader the same criteria and the same levels, so two people marking the same essay reach a similar score.

Required role: Administrator or Instructor.

Steps

Go to Learning → Rubrics.
Select New Rubric.
Name the rubric and select Create Rubric.
Open it and define its criteria.
Define the levels for each criterion and the points each is worth.

Criteria and levels form a grid

A rubric is a scoring grid: criteria are what you are judging, levels are how well each was done, and each level carries points. The rubric’s total is the points available across its criteria.

Write criteria as separate things a grader can judge independently. Two criteria that always move together are one criterion, and a grader forced to score them separately will score them identically.

Example: an HC Corp UK Ltd rubric for a written exercise separates the accuracy of the answer from how clearly it was communicated, because a correct answer explained badly is a real and different outcome.

Describe levels by what the work shows

The levels are what make grading consistent. Describe what work at that level actually demonstrates rather than labelling it good, fair, or poor — a grader can match work against a description and cannot match it against an adjective.

This matters most where several people grade the same assessment. The rubric is the only thing keeping their marks comparable.

Using a rubric while grading

When grading a question that carries a rubric, the grader sees the scoring grid and clicks a level to apply its score. That keeps the mark tied to a stated standard rather than a number somebody chose.

Example: a grader at HC Corp UK Ltd marking a written response selects the level matching the work, and the points follow from the rubric rather than from their own judgement of a number.

A rubric in use cannot be deleted

Deleting a rubric that assessments or questions still reference is refused, and the interface tells you to unlink it first or archive instead.

Archiving is usually what you want. A rubric that graded past work should remain readable, because it is the standard those marks were given against.

What happens next

Attach the rubric to the questions or assessments it applies to. Rubric-graded questions then arrive in the grading queue with the grid attached, so whoever grades them is working from your standard rather than their own.