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Types of Rubrics in myCourses

There are two types of rubrics in myCourses that can be used to evaluate your students’ work: analytic and holistic.

  • Analytic rubrics are comprised of one or more criteria, which are listed in the left-most column of the rubric. These can include intended learning outcomes or other aspects on which students are assessed (e.g., use of academic sources).

  • Holistic rubrics encompass a single criterion, for example, they can be used to assess student participation or their overall performance in a course.

Other rubric columns are called Levels, which refer to levels of achievement that can be obtained by students. These may be associated with a specific number of points (in analytic rubrics) or with a certain percentage (in holistic rubrics).

Analytic rubric

Analytic rubrics break performance into multiple criteria, each assessed separately, contributing to an overall assessment grade. As shown in the following example, an analytic rubric for assessing a bibliography assignment might have three criteria: Authority, Relevance, and Formatting. You can assess each from Level 1 to 4, resulting in an overall score.

This is how the above example may appear in the Rubrics tool:

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Holistic rubric

Holistic rubrics assess performance as a whole; for example, you can enter a global score for participation, even if this score is based on a variety of performance factors. 

This is how a holistic rubric may appear in the Rubrics tool. Note that students are assessed on a single criterion and that each level is assigned a percentage value, rather than a number of points. 

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