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The rating task

Authors can create a rating task that allows learners to choose one item from a list of rating boxes.

Caitlin Foran avatar
Written by Caitlin Foran
Updated over 3 months ago

This article covers the rating task type.

For a general overview of tasks and what they can do, see An introduction to tasks and for general instructions on how to add them to your course, see How to add a task to your course.

Overview of the rating task

The rating task consists of a bar made up of rating options. You can set what the labels are for each option e.g. 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. When a learner hovers over an option, they see a coloured tooltip (which you can also set with particular colours and text).

The rating task is not an automarked task.

When should I use a rating task?

Rating tasks are a good fit for anonymous voting, learner feedback, and self-assessment. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Example 1: Vote on space exploration

In this example we ask learners to “vote” on their thoughts on space exploration.

Screenshot of rating task asking learners to vote for their feelings regarding space exploration

Example 2: Course evaluation

In this next example we use the rating for a simple course evaluation.

Screenshot of rating task asking learners to vote for their agreement and disagreement with course structure

Facilitators can see what ratings learners have given using the Analysis button for the task under Marking in their Class Console.

Screenshot how facilitators can see the rating learner have given using the analysis button

Example 3: Self-assessment rubric

In the example below we use the Rating task type to support learners to self assess. In this example, we’ve also included the info icon so learners can compare and contrast each description to pick the one that best fits their work.

Screenshot of rating task asking learners to self assess

If you would like learners to rate/evaluate more than one aspect, you could use a series of rating tasks bundled together in a quiz.

Rating tasks are not the ideal task where you have a specific “correct” answer in mind. E.g. for saying which mark an exemplar task would receive. This is because rating tasks are not automarked. Instead, you might like to use a multiple choice or choice matrix task.

How do I create a rating task?

All tasks load with an example task to give an idea of what each field is for. To add your own task details, you can type over the existing content in the fields or select Clear task content, to start completely fresh.

Clear task content button on right of task element below task type choice.

Standard fields

This task has the standard fields/options that all tasks have.

At the top:

  • Question: Where you set the main question/task which tells learners what to answer or do.

And at the bottom:

  • Hint: Add a hint to give pointers or clues to give learners extra guidance to complete the task. Learners can choose to See hint to get this help “on demand”.

  • Feedback: Add feedback to give learners an automated response when they submit the task. See Writing feedback for tasks for pointers and ideas.

In between the top and bottom standard fields we have the following areas and fields.

Setting the rating options

For each rating option in the task, you have:

  • Value: The number stored as the learner response (to allow for analysis etc.)

  • Label: The label on each rating option. This can be text or numbers.

  • Tooltip: The text displayed when a learner hovers the cursor over a rating option.

  • Colour: The colour of the tooltip and of the label when it appears in the information box. You can pick colours from the colour library, enter a specific hex code, and change the opacity.

  • Description: The text displayed inside the information box, alongside the rating label, and tooltip, to give information about each rating.

You can see these depicted in the image below.

Screenshot showing examples of settings the Rating option have discussed above

You can also select from these additional settings.

  • Font size: Controls the size of the font for items in this task - Small(11px), Normal (14px), Large (17px), Extra large (20px), and Huge (24px). We recommend Large for most purposes.

  • Hide info icon: Lets you hide an information button to the left of the rating bar. The information button displays the label, tooltip, and description for each rating when the learner selects it.

Setting a marking template

Marking templates set the options a facilitator will have to mark and give feedback to learners for the task. Choose the appropriate template for your task and context from the dropdown.

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