Build a Rubric

In order to publish an assignment in Peerceptiv (make it visible to students), you must have a rubric in place. Students will use the rubric to review (comment on and rate) their peer's work. Effective rubric design is key to encouraging students to provide constructively critical reviews and producing assignments with strong reliability.

Scroll down or jump to the appropriate directions:

• Overview and Best Practices
• Get Started: Use the Rubric Library or Create Your Own Rubric
• Add a Comment Prompt
• Add a Rating Prompt
• Edit a Prompt
• Hide a Rubric

Overview and Best Practices

Rubrics in Peerceptiv consist of comment prompts and rating prompts. Comment prompts require students to write qualitative comments about the submission they are reviewing. Rating prompts ask students to quantitatively evaluate the quality of the work they are reviewing based on rating level descriptors.

Rubrics can have any number of prompts, but we recommend using a blend of comment prompts and rating prompts to generate qualitative feedback and reliable grades.

To generate valid and reliable grades, we recommend at least 5 rating prompts per rubric, with 4-7 levels for most of these prompts. There is no upper limit for the number of rating prompts, but reviewer fatigue may increase after 12 rating prompts. When creating rating prompts, consider how you would rate your students' work with a numerical rubric. The data generated through rating prompts will help you track learning outcomes on specific criteria.

Note: If you have a rubric with less than 3 rating prompts, the grades generated will not be reliable or valid, due to the lack of numerical data available.

We recommend having 2-4 comment prompts per rubric. This is because if there are too many commenting prompts, the quality and length of the reviewers’ comments and feedback comments tend to decrease.

Research on peer review has shown that putting the comment prompts before related rating prompts elicits more in-depth comments and encourages critical thinking. 

Note: If you create a rubric with only commenting prompts, students will be able to give each other reviews and feedback but submission grades and accuracy grades will not be generated. If you do this, we recommend putting all of the grading weight on the Task grade in the grading settings, which simply gives students a grade based on whether they complete the review and feedback tasks for the assignment. Contact [e-mail] for more information if needed. 

Get Started: Use the Rubric Library or Create Your Own Rubric

Click rubric on the left side navigation bar to begin building your rubric. From there, you can click the button that says "Import from Rubric Library," to import an entire rubric into your assignment, or click the large plus sign to begin adding individual comment or rating prompts.

If you click "Import from Rubric Library," you will be shown rubrics from your library. You will see a list of rubric templates from your library, your rubrics from past assignments (if you have created previous assignments or edited the rubrics in past assignments), the list of rubrics that are shared with you from colleagues (if applicable), and the list of Peerceptiv Curated Rubrics. Simply select a rubric from the list to import the entire rubric into your assignment.

If you would prefer to build the rubric as a template in your library to be used in multiple assignments, and then import that template into your assignment, click the orange circle profile icon in the top navy bar and then click Manage Rubrics. Click the +Template button to build a new rubric template. 

If you would like to build your rubric from individual prompts (either copied in or created by you), click the large plus sign in the right bottom corner. From there, you can choose to either Add Comment Prompt or Add Rating Prompt. 

Add a Comment Prompt

Select Add New Comment Prompt, then Create New and then add a name for that prompt. The name should be a word or phrase that identifies the criteria or aspect of the assignment that students will be reviewing.

Next, type the comment prompt. This should encourage students to leave helpful comments. The best prompts ask students to comment on specific aspects of the assignment and to leave constructive feedback, often both positive and negative. Images, equations and links can be embedded into the comment stem. Use language that encourages students to be specific and helpful.

• If you are adding a comment prompt, there must be at least one required comment. 
• We recommend having only one required comment per comment prompt unless you specify that students are to leave a specific number of comments for each prompt.
• Keep optional comments at 0 so there is only one commenting text box for students to fill. Students can expand the commenting box to be any length so for most assignments, there is no need to have multiple commenting text boxes. If you do have optional comments, please note that students only need to give feedback about the helpfulness of required comments.
• Add a tag if you want to sort by this tag later - this facilitates outcome mapping. For example, if you have several prompts in which students are working toward the outcome of a quality thesis, you could tag all of those prompts with the same tag (Thesis) to be able to sort by that tag when viewing the assignment results and see how students performed on that specific outcome.
• Click Save in the upper right to save the prompt. Prompts are not auto-saved so you need to click Save with any new prompts or edits made to existing prompts.

Copy an Existing Comment Prompt

To copy an existing comment prompt, click on the plus sign in the lower right hand corner of your screen. Select Add Commenting Prompt and then Copy Existing. This will take you to a list of all comment prompts that you have used in the past or have been set up for your use if you are using Peerceptiv with others at your institution. Click the Add button in the top right corner of the prompt to add it to your rubric. When you are done adding prompts, click to return to the rubric. If you don't see a prompt that you believe you should see, please email [e-mail] for assistance in adding it.

Add a Rating Prompt

 To add a rating prompt, click on the plus sign in the circle at the bottom right of the rubric page. Then select Add Rating Prompt and Create New.

Enter a name for the rating prompt. The name should be a word or phrase that identifies the aspect of the assignment that students will be rating. Be specific since this will help you identify the prompts. For example, in a lab assignment, there may be prompts with the names ‘Introduction - background material’ and ‘Introduction - research question.’

Type the prompt and let students know what you are asking them to rate in the "Rating Prompt" box. For instance, you may want to say something like "Please rate the quality of the introduction." You can include images, equations, or link to websites.

Rating Levels is where you put the descriptors that help students identify one level of work from another. By default, there are four levels, but you can add or delete levels to have anywhere between two and ten levels. On the right, click the plus sign below Rating Levels to add a level. You can adjust the score value and type a description. You must have a score level of 1 and you can have up to 10 levels. Level 1 is always the worst/lowest level. Generally the best rubrics have 4-7 levels in each rating prompt because this yields a spread of results. We do not recommend binary (yes/no, 1/2) rating prompts because they do not provide enough variation in rating levels to produce accurate and valid results. 

Use the plus and minus buttons or type in the desired number of levels. To move an already-created level, click on the up or down arrow buttons.

Next, you can set the weight of that prompt. The default is for all prompts to have the same weight, but if you want one area to count more towards the total submission score, you can adjust the weight. A prompt with a weight of 2 will count twice as much as a prompt with a weight of 1. A prompt with a weight of 3 will count three times as much, and so on.

Add a tag if you want to sort by this tag later - this facilitates outcome mapping. For example, if you have several prompts in which students are working toward the outcome of a quality thesis, you could tag all of those prompts with the same tag (Thesis) to be able to sort by that tag when viewing the assignment results and see how students performed on that specific outcome.

If you have additional supplemental materials that you want students to receive based on their rating level performance, click Attach a Help Resource. You can link to a website or attach a file. Click on the appropriate type of resource and then add the link or file. Give the resource a name and choose the threshold, or score level on the attached rating prompt, at which students will be automatically shown that resource if they score below the threshold. Click Attach to save. We recommend not attaching the same resource to several prompts because students will be sent the resource every time their submission scores below the related threshold(s) and students may end up with the same resource multiple times if you attach it to multiple prompts.

Copy an Existing Rating Prompt

To copy an existing rating prompt, click on the plus sign in the lower right hand corner of your screen. Select Add Rating Prompt and then Copy Existing. This will take you to a list of all rating prompts that you have used in the past or have been set up for your use if you are using Peerceptiv with others at your institution. Click the Add button in the top right corner of the prompt to add it to your rubric. If you don't see a prompt that you believe you should see, please email [e-mail] for assistance in adding it.

Edit a Prompt

To continue building a rubric or editing it, click on Rubric on the left navigation bar. The rubric can be created or edited until the reviewing period opens. After the reviewing period opens, it is not possible to edit the rubric. Please email [e-mail] if you need to make edits after the reviewing period has opened to discuss the effects this could have on completed student reviews.

Hide a Rubric

If this assignment contains a model answer or answer key in the rubric, you can hide the rubric from view during the submission phase. Students will not be able to see it during this time. As soon as the reviewing period begins, it will be visible. We recommend not allowing late submissions or heavily penalizing late submissions if you hide the rubric since students will be able to see the rubric after the submission deadline has passed.

To hide the rubric after you have created or added it, click the eye symbol by the rubric name.

If the eye appears open, it is visible to students. If the eye is crossed out (see image below), then it is not visible to students during the submission period.

In general, we recommend keeping the rubric visible so students can see the descriptors and prompts as they are drafting their work. If you do hide the rubric, consider letting students know the general rubric aspects or prompts that the work will be assessed on in the assignment description so that they can know how they will be assessed even if they cannot see the full rubric during the submission period.

If you would like to schedule a rubric consultation with a member of our instructional support team, please email [e-mail].