Rubrics are a scoring tool you can use to mark Blackboard assessments, which can help you evaluate students’ work on a specific scale, against certain criteria. You can start creating a rubric from the Gradebook, or when creating an assessment.
Create a new Rubric
In the Gradebook, select the Settings icon, then Create Rubric in the settings panel:
When creating an assessment you should create the rubric before you add questions to your assessment. When setting up a Blackboard Assignment, Test, or a marked Journal or Discussion, select the Settings icon to add a rubric. In the settings panel, under Additional Tools, select ‘Add marking rubric’ to create a new rubric, or to add an existing rubric to your assessment (Only one rubric can be associated with an assessment):
Add a title for your rubric and select a rubric type. Titles are limited to 255 characters. If you don’t add a title, “New Rubric” and the date appear as the title. By default, four criteria rows and four achievement level columns appear:
You can add, delete, and rename the rows and columns. Hover over a cell to access the edit and delete icons. Select the plus sign wherever you want to add a row or column and type a title. If you don’t want the new row or column, you can delete it:
When finished, save your rubric:
You can create four types of rubrics in a course:
- Percentage-based rubrics
- Percentage-range rubrics
- Points-based rubrics
- Points-range rubrics
Percentage-based rubrics
For percentage-based rubrics, the criteria total percentage must equal 100%. You may only use whole numbers. You may add rows set to 0% as long as your total percentage amounts to 100.
If the percentages don’t equal 100, a warning message appears at the bottom of the screen. Select Balance Criteria next to the message to auto-adjust the percentages so that they equal 100. Or, you can manually update the percentages as needed.
For the levels of achievement, one column must have a value of 100%. You may only use whole numbers.
Percentage-range rubrics
For percentage-range rubrics, each level of achievement has a range of values. When you grade, you select the appropriate percentage level for a particular level of achievement. The system calculates the points earned by multiplying the weight times thee achievement percentage times the item points.
Points-based rubrics
For points-based rubrics, the maximum possible points should be less than or equal to 99,999. You may only use whole numbers. You may add rows set to 0 as long as your total points are less than or equal to 99,999.
Points-range rubrics
For points-range rubrics, the maximum possible points should be less than or equal to 99,999. You may only use whole numbers. You may add rows set to 0 as long as your total points are less than or equal to 99,999. The point range for each criterion must go from a lower range to a higher range.
When you add an achievement level, a percentage is automatically added. For example, if you add an achievement level between two levels listed at 100% and 75%, your new level is assigned 88%. You can adjust the percentages as needed. Select anywhere on the rubric to save your changes.
For new and existing levels of achievement, you can add an optional description. Achievement titles have a 40 character limit. Criteria and description cells have a 1,000 character limit. Rubrics support plain text only. You can paste text from another document, but the formatting doesn’t carry over.
When you press the Enter key, a new paragraph isn’t started in a cell. The Enter key confirms you’re finished. Your work is saved and you leave edit mode.
Rubric columns range from highest to lowest scores. You can’t change this order.
Qualitative rubrics
Important: Currently all rubrics in Blackboard Ultra are scoring. If you copy a qualitative rubric from an Original course, it will be converted into a scoring rubric in Ultra, but with 0 points associated with each criterion.
Once the Rubric is in Ultra, open the rubric and change the Rubric Type from percentage to points, to ensure that it is a zero point rubric.
Student view of rubrics
Students can view a rubric before they open an assignment, test, and discussion and after they start the attempt. They can click on ‘This item is graded with a rubric’ in the Details & Information section of the item to view the rubric:
Students can view the rubric alongside the instructions. They can expand each rubric criterion to view the achievement levels and organise their efforts to meet the requirements of the graded work:
Managing rubrics
You can copy, delete, and export rubrics.
Copying rubrics
You can copy Blackboard rubrics over from your other courses in Blackboard (Original or Ultra). Please see the guide on Copying Blackboard Rubrics.
Duplicating rubrics
After you use a rubric for grading, you can’t edit it, but you can make a copy that you can edit and rename.
Go to your gradebook. Select the Settings icon to bring up the Gradebook Settings panel. Scroll down to the Course Rubrics section.
Access a rubric’s menu by selecting the three-dot icon and then select Duplicate. The copied rubric opens with the date and ‘copy’ added to the title. You can make edits as needed. Select ‘Save’ to save the duplicate rubric.
Note: If you copy an existing percentage-based rubric and change it to a percentage-range rubric, all the descriptions are cleared.
If you’ve already used a rubric to grade an item, you can also copy the rubric and edit the duplicate version. From an item’s Settings panel, open the rubric. Select Create a Copy at the bottom of the screen. When you create a copy of a rubric you used to grade a test or assignment, the new rubric is associated with the item. Any grades calculated with the original rubric are preserved, but these grades are converted to overrides. You can regrade these submissions with the new rubric.
You can’t copy rubrics on small devices.
Guide last updated on October 30, 2024
