Rubrics

Students often understand the requirements for an assignment through a rubric. Rubrics provide an at-a-glance option for students to achieve standards of performance. Canvas rubrics are used to efficiently provide feedback for and grade assignments and to track learning outcomes.

See Carnegie Mellon’s guide for more details on rubrics and assessment.

Add Rubrics to Assignments

As you build assignment rubrics in Canvas, communicate clear requirements for students. In addition to building a rubric within the assignment, you can create a separate rubric and then add it to an assignment or multiple assignments. Rubrics can be managed and edited inside courses.

Rubrics can also be used in discussions and quizzes.

Add Outcomes to Rubrics

To track course- and department-level outcomes, add outcomes to assignment rubrics. The option “Use this criterion for scoring” allows you to decide whether the outcome counts toward the assignment grade or not.

As you grade, select a proficiency level for any outcomes that are attached to the rubric.

Use Rubrics to Grade

Rubrics integrate with the Canvas SpeedGrader. The option “Use this rubric for assignment grading” needs to be enabled for the rubric to record a score in the Gradebook.

Rubrics can also include free-form comments instead of proficiency scales if you would like to provide personalized feedback for criteria.

If you use Peer Reviews in your course, students can use the assignment rubric to assess peers’ work.