No matter how well-designed, authentic, valid, or frequent our assessments are, if we don't have clear instructions and grading criteria, students may not be able to understand our expectations. The next two items in Section C focus on these two important aspects of designing assessments: creating rubrics or scoring guides and providing excellent instructions.

C5: Rubrics
C6: Assessment Instructions
C6 Video Walkthrough
Resources

C5: Rubrics/Scoring Guides

ALIGNED: Rubrics or descriptive criteria for desired outcomes are included in most or all assessment activities.
EXEMPLARY: Rubrics and/or descriptive criteria for desired outcomes include models of “good work.”

Well-designed courses include rubrics and/or scoring guides to help set expectations, provide timely feedback, and provide guidance for improvement. An effective rubric or scoring guide articulates exactly what the instructor is looking for and lets students know how items will be graded. This builds confidence, reduces frustration, and avoids grade surprises and complaints. In addition, a well-designed rubric can help students ascertain where they need to put their energy to improve their learning or performance.

Rubrics are great time-savers for instructors, too. They help to keep scoring consistent, provide built-in explanations for levels of achievement, and give us a basis for our feedback.

Exemplary courses include both well-designed rubrics and model work to illustrate outcomes to students.

Canvas Rubrics

Taking the time to include a rubric right there in the Canvas assignment not only helps your students understand what is expected of them before they submit their work, but it can also help you to speed up grading. And if you can settle on a grade faster, that leaves you more time to provide quality feedback--that's called a win-win!

The following four-minute video provides a little more background in how to use the Canvas rubrics tool to bolster assessment expectations and grading:

C6: Instructions

ALIGNED: Instructions clearly explain to students how to successfully complete the assessments.
EXEMPLARY: Instructions are written clearly and with exemplary detail to ensure understanding.

Well-written assessment instructions are essential to student success. They should both explain the assessment and provide step-by-step instructions for successfully completing and submitting the assignment. Exemplary courses provide exceptional details to ensure student success.

NOTE: Because we are in Section C: Assessment, this element only refers to assessment instructions. Introducing content is covered in A9.

Sometimes being clear and concise in instructions is challenging! The following tips may be helpful.

Organize Instructions Into Sections/Chunks

Try to break down your instructions into sections, and try to repeat this pattern for all of your assignment, test or discussion instructions. The consistent structure not only helps students locate specific details of the instructions, but it also helps them anticipate what type of information will be included in the instructions and where to find it. Here is a list of some sections that might be found in typical instructions:

introduction that includes goals
topic/prompt
directions
due date
submission instructions
rubric, grading, and feedback information
submission instructions
support resources

Use Lists

Lists can be extremely beneficial to students. They provide welcome white space that is easier to read than a big block of text, they help students easily see requirements, and, when required, they help students complete a sequenced set of instructions.

Use numbered lists when items need to be done in order, or if the number of items in a list is critical. For instance, if students need to complete a series of tasks in order, use a numbered list:

do this first
this second
this third

If you have items you'd like to put in a list and the order is not important, choose a bulleted list. Each bullet should have the same grammatical structure, and, preferably, be as succinct as possible.

Use Consistent Due Dates

Good courses have a rhythm. This helps students predict when things are due, and helps them plan their time. As you set your due dates, keep in mind that many of our students are working, have families, and are taking other courses. If it is possible, try to use the same day of the week for the due date on like-assessments. For example, you might have discussion initial posts due on Wednesdays and replies due on Saturdays.

Include Help Resources

Different students will need different levels of support. Including links to online resources or student services allows you to provide help just when your students may need it. For example, students might benefit from information about college resources, such as free access to Microsoft 365 or tutoring services. They may need a reminder about where they can find information that relates to the assessment, such as previously published pages or modules within your course. And don't forget about the Canvas Student Guides! The guides are full of valuable tutorials that you can share with your students in the assessment instructions, specifically those created for students about how to submit various types of assignments. You can even link to your Q&A Discussion so students have a place to ask questions and get answers.

Reread Your Instructions

It's easy to get in a hurry and quickly write up instructions for an assignment that we know like the back of our hands. We've been offering this assignment for years, and so we might cut a few corners in our explanation, not intentionally but just because so many details are already known since we've "done" this assignment before.

But your students, of course, will be new to this assignment so they need all of the details explained. Try reading your instructions out loud to see what may be missing, or try actually following those instructions to make sure no steps have been missed.

🚀 Pro tip: Check out @ONE's Example Assignment Template, which has pre-built sections and guiding questions to get you started.

Video Walkthrough

Grab your popcorn--it's time to take a video tour! In this 4-minute video, Sharai Forbes shows us how she gave her research-paper instructions a makeover to align with C6 and support student success.

Resources

CVC's Course Design Resources for C5-C6:

Other Resources:

Sample Assignment with Rubric: When you import this to your course, you are also importing the rubric! You can then use it as a base to make a variety of different rubrics.

🛑 Before you click "Next," please work through all the tabbed sections on this page.