Align learning outcomes to rubric criteria

You can align learning outcomes to rubric criteria, enabling you to demonstrate how assessment criteria map to a learner's demonstration of learning outcomes in an activity (discussion topic or assignment). For learners, this makes it easier to understand their progress against a learning outcome and locate areas for improvement.

You can align learning outcomes to rubric criteria during the rubric creation process, or you can edit an existing rubric to add alignment standards if that rubric has not yet been used in an evaluation.

After attaching the completed rubric to an activity, the learning outcomes are visible from the Learning Outcomes tab in the activity.

Note: Before you align outcomes to rubric criteria, ensure you have created an achievement scale for your organization that measures achievement across all of the assessment activities aligned to outcomes. For example, achievement levels might include the following: Does Not Meet Expectations, Meets Expectations, and Exceeds Expectations. For more information, see Creating an achievement scale.

Note the following:

  • Learning outcomes indirectly aligned to an activity via a rubric cannot be removed from the activity unless they are removed from the rubric.
  • Learning outcomes that are indirectly aligned via a rubric can be directly assessed, like any other outcome.
  • Removing a rubric containing learning outcomes does not affect any previously assessed learning outcomes. For example, if you assess a learner in a learning outcome and then remove the rubric, the assessment is hidden; it is not deleted. Re-adding the rubric makes the outcome assessment visible again.
  • You can attach a rubric with learning outcomes aligned to learning objectives or competencies; however, the two systems do not have any interaction, and they cannot be used simultaneously within the same course offering.
  • You can use learning outcomes in discussion topics. For more information, see Align learning outcomes to discussion topics.

To align learning outcomes to rubric criteria

Note: The name of the Learning Outcomes tool and some menu items and links therein depend on the language term you have defined in the d2l.Languages.Terminology.LearningOutcomes configuration variable. The default setting for this configuration variable is Standards, which is what we are using in the procedure and screen captures in this topic.

  1. From Course Admin, select Standards.
  2. Create or import learning outcomes into your course.
  3. From Course Admin, click Rubrics.
  4. Do one of the following:
    • Create a new rubric and add criteria
    • Edit an existing rubric that contains criteria which has not yet been used in evaluating learner work.
  5. On the criterion where you want to align a standard, click Standards.

    Within the row for each criterion, click Standards to align a standard with that specific criterion

  6. Expand any parent outcomes to view the child outcomes.
  7. On the Browse Standards dialog, select the standards you want to align and click Align Standard. The added standards appear below the criterion, tagged with the information about the standard. The rubrics changes are automatically saved.

    The Browse Standards page lists the applicable standards you have previously imported.

  8. To see the full text of the standard, hover over the standard tag.

    Hover over the standard to see the full text for each criterion

  9. Click Close.