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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).

In this article:  

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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