D2L is upgrading its rubric toolset. If you use rubrics now you may have noticed that you needn’t install rubrics in both a discussion or dropbox, and its associated grade item in the gradebook. Now, rubric data (your grading) appears to students as a linkable item in their grade report, along with their score.
Beginning in January, if you construct a rubric you’ll see a “New Rubric Experience” screen available. This interface makes it a little easier to build rubrics, and change how they work.
There is probably more rubric improvements to come in 2019 and 2020. And it could be a while before D2L accepts uploadable rubrics – computers and applications just aren’t “smart” enough to read your .docx (or .doc!) rubric because each professor formats their rubrics slightly differently. But if you’ve considered trying D2L’s rubric toolset to save time and provide meaningful, accessible feedback to students, now is a good time.
Just try it out with a single rubric. Copy/paste in the criteria, set the scoring, and you’ll be up and running in a few minutes. If, at the end of the spring semester, you decide it wasn’t helpful, you haven’t invested too much. But you might find that D2L’s rubric tools make grading less arduous, and help you give feedback to students that they can practically implement in future assignments.